Last Fleet

Joshua Fox
 First published in 2020 by Black Armada

www.blackarmada.com

Standard edion ISBN 978-0-9956215-7-2

Deluxe edion ISBN 978-0-9956215-9-6

PDF edion ISBN 978-0-9956215-8-9

Each writer for Last Fleet including the game, the scenarios and the essay
retains individual copyright for their work.

Vincenus Mahew and Anna Molla retain individual copyright for their
respecve illustraons.

All rights reserved. No part of this publicaon may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmied in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the copyright owner.

The collecon and arrangement copyright © Black Armada 2020.

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Credits
! Design and wring: Joshua Fox
! Eding: Mo Holkar
! Layout: Elizabeth Lovegrove
! Lead illustrator: Vincenus Mahew
! Addional illustraons: Anna Molla
! The secon on Rank and Duty is by Joanna Piancastelli; Dictys and Danae is
by Misha Bushyager; and Promethia Damned is by Gav Thorpe.

Last Fleet is Powered by the Apocalypse. If you don’t know what that means,
don’t worry about it – but do yourself a favour and google it when you get a
moment.

Last Fleet is inspired by the wonderful stories of Balestar Galacca, by some

of my favourite PBTA games: Night Witches and The Watch, and of course it
owes a huge debt to Apocalypse World. This game most likely wouldn’t exist
without them.

I also owe thanks to Mark Diaz Truman for helpful feedback and
encouragement, and to the wonderful folk at the UK Indie RPG League,
Gauntlet Forums, A Rose by Any Other Game, and The Indie RPG Reading Club
for being sounding-boards and advice-givers on various aspects of the project.

Thanks to my stalwart playtesters: Becky Annison, Petras Astrauskas, Zach Bain, Nick Bate,
John Bogart, Ken Breese, Simon Burde, Charis, Brendan Conway, Ace Cortes, Jim Crocker,
Gareth Dunston, Sue Ellio, Steve Ellis, Charles Etheridge-Nunn, Katherine Fackrell,
Lorenzo Folin, Jaye Foster, Henry Gaudet, Michael Go, Neil Gow, Mary Hamilton, April
Ho‑Tsing, Joanna Jewstrat, Michał Kępiński, Marn Lloyd, Chris Longhurst, Elizabeth
Lovegrove, Donogh McCarthy, Elaine McCourt, Tom McGrenery, Minerva McJanda,
Christo Meid, Johanna Jeanne Mevier, David Miessler-Kubanek, Simon Miller, Diana
Moon, David Morrison, John Mycro, Chris Nolan, Tim Noyce, Greg Oukoloff, Geoffrey
Payne, Leandro Pondoc, Robin Poole, Conner Rogers, Jusn Rogers, Richard Ruane, Rob
Ruthven, Michael Sheahan, Vaughan Sheahan, Chris Simpson, Mahew Sydenham, Rhys
Tester, Cathriona Tobin, James Torrance, Tina Trillitzsch, Mark Diaz Truman, Mikael Tsvaer,
River Williams, Isa Wills, Sławomir Wójcik, Bernard Wong, Aybars Yurdun.

3
4
 For Becky.

“What do you hear Starbuck?”

“Nothing but the rain.”

“Then grab your gun and bring in the cat.”

5
 Table of contents
Overview of the game 9
Introducon 9 Basic Moves 16
Roles and objecves 11 The playbooks 18
Rules overview 12 Keeping it fun for everyone 20
Your stats 14 Teaching the game 22
I mark what now? 15

Key rules 25
Framing and ending scenes 25 NPCs and mechanical effects 34
Moves 26 Doom clocks 35
Pressure and breaking point 30 Shortages 36
XP 32 Fleet tracks 38
Relaonships 33

GMing the game 42

Overview 42 Handling player moves 46
The GM’s Moves 43 Principles 47
When to make a Move 44 Techniques 55
Responding with a GM Move 45

GM moves 60
Core Moves 60 Threats and threat Moves 72
Themac Moves 62

Seng up your game 79

The Corax and the Commonwealth 80 Tech levels 83
The war – before and aer 81 Your characters 84
The fleet 82 The first session 86

Player Moves 89
Basic Moves 89 Role Moves 113

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Example of play 117

Playbooks 129
Aries 130 Libra 148
Taurus 133 Scorpio 151
Gemini 136 Sagiarius 155
Cancer 139 Capricorn 158
Leo 142 Aquarius 161
Virgo 145 Pisces 164

The Fleet 168

Rank – the basics 168 Damage 186
Ships – the basics 169 Running big bales 191
Rank and duty: military hierarchy in
your game 172

The Commonwealth and the Corax 199

Seng overview 199 Ships 203
Facons 200 The Corax 205

Quick-start scenario: Cold War 211

Setup 222 GM notes 218
Player characters 223

Quick-start scenario: Dictys and Danae 220

Setup 212 NPCs 229
Player characters 213 Ships 230
GM notes 228 Facons 231

Promethia Damned 232

Gaming with Promethia 235 The Doom 241
Facons and special persons 238

Index 244

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8
 Overview
Overview of the
game
Introduction
The human race is fleeing through space from an implacable inhuman foe
which seeks nothing less than the complete destrucon of humanity. Even now,
the enemy are hiding among us, biding their me. You play the brave survivors
of a terrible holocaust that has all but wiped out humanity, fleeing on board a
handful of surviving ships, searching for a safe haven.

Your characters are officers, pilots, engineers, policians, and journalists,

striving to keep the flame of humanity alight. You will contend with an inhuman
adversary, you will fight to keep the fleet from falling apart, and you will
struggle to overcome your own fears and doubts.

Welcome to the Last Fleet.

The focus of this game is pressure. Pressure on the characters. Pressure on

resources. Pressure on the fleet as a whole. The most visible manifestaon of
this is that your characters gradually build up mechanical Pressure as they go
into acon to fight the enemy, to root out infiltrators, or to search for resources
to keep the fleet going. You’ll have to work, between missions, to reduce that
Pressure through social interacons with the other characters.

The pressure theme is also represented through resource Shortages; through

the gradual build-up of Arion that chips away at the fleet in bale damage
and casuales and threatens to set the people against each other; and through
the fear of infiltraon and treachery. Your characters will work to keep these
problems from geng out of control.

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Overview of the game

Of course, another focus is baling against your inhuman adversaries. When

the enemy’s ships jump in and launch their fighters, you have to be ready to
fight. Humanity is outnumbered and outgunned, and the best you can hope for,
most of the me, is to hold them off long enough to flee. But you chalk up
some wins along the way.

Last Fleet is about humanity’s desperate bale for survival, and in that sense
you’re all on the same side. But it’s also about your characters as human beings
– their flaws, their relaonships, and how they react to pressure. The game is
engineered to produce conflict between the characters – not (or not
necessarily) actual fighng, but certainly tension, fricon, arguments, and
boiling-over emoons. Throw yourself into that stuff, because it’s the heart of
the game.

You can play the game straight out of the box, by playing the denizens of the
Interplanetary Commonwealth fleet – a group of survivors consisng of a small
civilian fleet and the massive baleship Agamemnon, divided on their best way
to fight and stay alive. They are opposed by the Corax, an extradimensional
fungus network that aacks out of spaal ris and turns the fleet against itself
by dragging its people off and cloning them. This seng is described on page
199–209. There’s also an alternave seng about cies teleporng between
dimensions to escape the vengeful god of death, on page 232–243. Finally, if you
prefer to create your own seng, the game talks you through how to do it on
page 81–83.

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 Overview
Roles and objectives

Roles and objectives

Roleplaying games come in many variees, and it’s helpful if we’re all clear on what
kind of game we’re playing, and what we’re trying to do when we sit down to play.

Last Fleet has players, most of whom are responsible for controlling one
character (their player character or PC). Their role is to describe their character
and say what that character is saying and doing. One player, the Game Master
or GM, takes the lead in playing the other characters in the game and pushing
forward the various threats that the players have to contend with.

When playing Last Fleet, there are four objecves that apply to both the GM
and the players equally. Everything you say and do in the game should fulfil one
or more of these objecves.

! Bring the characters, the fleet, and the war to life. Treat your characters as
though they were real people. Commit to the logic of the game world. Seize
every opportunity to describe them in vivid detail.
! Focus the game on acon, intrigue, and drama. Try to weave a story that is
excing. Adrenaline-soaked acon scenes. Tense polics and intrigue.
Gripping interpersonal drama. Lean towards those themes and you’ll get the
best from the game.
! Engage the people around the table. This is a cooperave game. Your
characters may be rivals or even enemies, but as players you should be fans
of each other’s characters. Focus the game on the player characters, and
drive the game towards what interests and excites your group.
! Play to find out what happens. Decide what happens in the game moment-
by-moment, responding to and building on what the other people around the
table say, what the rules say, and what the dice say. Let yourself be surprised
and delighted by what all these unpredictable elements bring to the table.

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Overview of the game

Rules overview
Last Fleet is Powered by the Apocalypse (PBTA), which simply means it’s
inspired by the roleplaying game Apocalypse World and uses a lot of the
mechanical framework of that game. Don’t worry, you don’t need Apocalypse
World to play.

If you’re not familiar with PBTA games, some key concepts to be aware of are:
! The game is a conversaon. We each contribute to that conversaon,
describing what happens in the game’s ficon, going back and forth. If
you’ve played almost any other roleplaying game that’s going to be prey
familiar. If you haven’t, pay aenon to the examples in this book and you’ll
get the idea.
! The GM’s acons are broken down into Moves. They can only make their
Moves when the rules say so, but when they do, those Moves happen
automacally without rolling any dice.
! The GM doesn’t push a story or plot of their own. They help make the
world feel real and drive it forward, but they’re playing to find out what
happens next, just like the other players.
! Players each create a character using a Playbook which contains abilies
and traits for a parcular character archetype. You select the opons you
want and tailor your character to your preferences. Only one person can
choose a given Playbook.
! The players’ acons may also trigger Moves. Player Moves happen
whenever a specific trigger is hit, such as “when you engage in bale”. As
soon as a trigger is hit, we stop the conversaon and follow the rules in that
Move. Player Moves don’t apply to the GM’s characters, unless specifically
noted in the text.

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 Overview
Rules overview

! Player Moves are broken down into Basic Moves, Playbook Moves, and
Role Moves. Everyone can use Basic Moves. Playbook Moves and Role
Moves are only available if you chose them when you created your
character, or if you take them as an advance later on.
! A player Move will typically tell you to roll 2d6 (i.e. two six sided dice) and
add a Stat, which usually varies from –2 to +3. You might add other
modifiers too. The Move then tells you what to do in three cases:
• If the total is 10+, that’s a Strong Hit and you usually get most or all of
what you wanted.
• If the total is 7–9 that’s a Weak Hit and you get some of what you
wanted, or maybe all of what you wanted but at a cost.
• If the total is 6 or less that’s a Miss, and you’re in the GM’s hands.

Of course, Last Fleet has its own specific rules, aimed at focusing the acon on a
parcular genre and style of play. Some key things to note include:
! Player characters have a Pressure track consisng of five boxes. Every me
something bad happens to your character, you might Mark one of your
Pressure boxes. Physical harm is a common trigger, but Marking Pressure can
also be triggered by other circumstances, such as losing a loved one.
! You can voluntarily Mark Pressure to gain a bonus to a roll, aer you roll the
dice. Marking one Pressure gets you +1, up to a maximum of +3. As long as
you can afford to Mark Pressure, you can succeed at most rolls if you wish.
! There are also Moves which enable you to Erase Pressure. You generally do
this by taking social or emoonal risks with your character. This generates
interesng, dramac relaonships between the characters.
! If your Pressure track fills up, you’ll hit Breaking Point. You can then only
reduce your Pressure again by taking one of the Breaking Point acons listed
on your Playbook. These irraonal or risky acons create even more drama.
You can only take each Breaking Point acon once. Eventually you’ll have no

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Overview of the game

choice but to choose a Breaking Point acon that takes you out of play
altogether.
! The fleet as a whole tracks Arion in a similar way to Pressure. Arion
represents the collecve pressure and resource shortages affecng the fleet.
When the Arion track fills up, there’s a literal or metaphorical explosion as
things fall apart or the people reach their limit.
! Characters earn Experience Points (XP) when they make any Move marked
with an asterisk (*), which are called Cardinal Moves. XP can be used to buy
new Moves and other improvements, for every five XP earned.
! Play tends to go back and forth between acon-oriented scenes and social
scenes. In the acon scenes, your life or the safety of the fleet is on the line,
and Pressure is building up. In the social scenes, your heart is on the line,
and Pressure is reducing. That’s the core loop of the game: acon, drama,
acon, drama.

Your stats
Player characters have five stats that determine how good they are at stuff. A
high stat means you tend to succeed at the relevant Moves and keep the
situaon more under control. A low stat doesn’t necessarily mean you’re bad at
it, but it does mean that using the relevant Moves tends to lead to trouble or
drama of some kind. The stats are:
! Raw, as in raw skill, talent, or emoon, used for fighng (Engage In Bale)
and reducing pressure by Leng Loose.
! Hard, as in “she is one hard woman”, used for resisng threats and harm
(Shake Off, Weather Serious Harm), and pung social/emoonal pressure
on others (Call Someone On Their Shit).
! Sharp, as in smart or percepve, used for invesgaon (Seek Out) and
Interfering with other characters’ Moves.

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 Overview
I mark what now?

! Smooth, as in charming or socially skilled, used for decepon (Cover Up)

and policking (Pull Strings).
! Warm, as in loving and supporve, used for reducing pressure by making
human connecons (Reach Out) and helping other characters’ Moves
(Support).

I Mark what now?

There’s a few technical terms used in this book that you need to know:
! “The Ficon” means the stuff happening in the story. It doesn’t include the
rules or the dice, or the people sat around the game table. It includes your
characters, what they’re saying and doing, where they are, and so on.
! Mark just means “check a box”, usually on a track of some kind. So, if the
game says to Mark Pressure, you check one of the boxes on your Pressure
track.
! Conversely, Erase means “remove a check from a box”.
! Tracks run from le to right, so you check the lemost box first, and the
rightmost box isn’t checked unl all the others are Marked. And conversely
you Erase from right to le, so the lemost box is always the last one to be
Erased.
! Somemes you’ll be given Hold, which just means “some points you can spend
later on something nice”. Hold is specific to the Move that gave it: you can’t
spend Hold from one Move on benefits from another.
! Somemes you’ll get +1 Forward, which means “add 1 to your next dice
roll”; or if it says +1 Forward to a specific thing, then the bonus only applies
to that thing.
! Somemes you’ll get +1 Ongoing, usually with a condion aached, which
means you get to add one to all your dice rolls when the condion applies.

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Overview of the game

The Basic Moves

There are twelve Basic Moves that can be used by all player characters. They
are described in full on pages 89–112. You don’t need to memorize them:
there’s a printable two-sided reference sheet at hp://blackarmada.com/last-
fleet-downloads/ that includes the full text whenever you need it in play. It is
helpful to know roughly how they work though, so here is a summary.

Perhaps the most important Move is Raise The Pressure. You can use it aer any
roll to Mark up to three Pressure and gain +1 to the roll for each box so Marked.
It means you can nearly always succeed at a roll, if you want to badly enough.

There’s three other Moves that are parcularly important. These are the holy
trinity of Last Fleet, and deserve to be explained in detail here:
! Reach Out uses Warm. It is used to make a real human connecon with
another person. To trigger it, you have to open up to them and make
yourself vulnerable by sharing your deepest thoughts and feelings. Reaching
Out reduces Pressure for both of you, if you roll well, and also increases the
strength of your Relaonship.
! Let Loose uses Raw. It is used when you indulge in a vice, potenally to
excess. It could be anything that releases tension: drugs, booze, gambling,
sex, fighng. Whatever it is, you’re doing it in a fairly uncontrolled way – not
just a quick drink, but drinking – and it could go wrong as a result. Let Loose
is easier to trigger than Reach Out, but also tends to have worse
consequences when you roll badly.
! Call Someone On Their Shit uses Hard. It is used when you forthrightly
demand that someone change their behaviour. When you roll well, it forces
the target to do what you want, or forcefully refuse and suffer mechanical
and social consequences.

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 Overview
The Basic Moves

These three Moves – Reach Out, Let Loose, and Call Someone On Their Shit –
somemes have similar triggers. A sex scene could trigger Reach Out, if it
maers to you both, or Let Loose, if it’s purely physical. Giving someone advice
could be Reaching Out, if it’s mostly done to reach out to them, or Calling
Someone On Their Shit, if it’s about demanding they change their ways. Pay
close aenon to the intent behind the acon to work out which Move you
should use.

Here’s a brief summary of the remaining Basic Moves:

! Engage In Bale uses Raw, and is used when you’re fighng someone with
lethal weapons, whether on the aack or defence.
! Shake Off uses Hard, and is used any me you’re trying to avoid or resist a
threat – an enemy fighter on your tail, soldiers who are hunng for you, the
psychic influence of the Corax intelligence. Only used when no other Move
applies.
! Weather Serious Harm is used when you’ve taken the brunt of an aack or
other harmful effect, to see how badly it hurts you.
! Seek Out uses Sharp, and is used when you’re trying to find something or
get to the boom of a mystery.
! Pull Strings uses Smooth, and is used when you’re trying to get help from an
NPC or facon somewhere on the fleet. You need to do it ahead of me, so
it’s less useful when a situaon comes up out of le field.
! Cover Up uses Smooth, and is used when you’re trying to hide something
serious – from specific people, or from a larger group, perhaps the enre
fleet. It isn’t used for stealth: use Shake Off where it’s important to know if
you can stay hidden.

17
Overview of the game

! Support uses Warm and Interfere uses Sharp – or if you have a Relaonship
you can use that instead. They are used when you’re trying to help someone
else (Support) or hinder them (Interfere). You can also use Support when an
NPC helps you.
! Wait Helplessly allows you to give someone else a bonus to their roll when
you’re not present, by describing what you’re doing to cope with the
tension.

The Playbooks
Characters are created using Playbooks, broad character archetypes with a
specific set of Moves which only they have access to at the start of the game. As
well as these, they give you quesons to ask the other players to set up your
starng Relaonships, and one or two unique Breaking Point acons that are
different from those available to other characters.

Playbooks are more based around personality than a specific occupaon, and
indeed, anyone can be a pilot, officer, engineer, polician, or civilian regardless
of which Playbook they choose – though some do lean in a parcular direcon.

The Playbooks are:

! Aries, a hot-headed character who rushes in where angels fear to tread, and
is unafraid to speak their mind.
! Taurus, a tough, selfless, and principled character who does what’s needed
no maer how much punishment is thrown at them.
! Gemini, a cunning manipulator who pursues an agenda that might not be
completely in line with the fleet’s interests.
! Cancer, an experienced leader who cares deeply for their comrades, but
may be a lile too willing to overlook their problems.

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 Overview
The Playbooks

! Leo, a charismac leader who others want to follow. Where will they lead
them?
! Virgo, a serious professional who prides themselves on being the best, but
may put themselves under too much pressure at me.
! Libra, a skilled diplomat and negoator who may be looked to for
leadership.
! Scorpio, a secreve manipulator whose moves are in doubt – including by
themselves.
! Sagiarius, a curious character who is at their best when exploring, meeng
new people, or digging into secrets.
! Capricorn, an uncompromising taccian who is willing to take risks to defeat
the enemy. Will they take things too far?
! Aquarius, a percepve invesgator who does not shrink from confronng
the truth, no maer how painful it might be.
! Pisces, a character with strange powers that allow them to perceive things
others can’t. These powers may also bring them too close to the enemy,
however.

As well as creang your characters, you’ll need to make decisions about the
fleet, the enemy and the war. All of this is covered in more detail on page 81–83.

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Overview of the game

Keeping it fun for everyone

In roleplaying games, we can do stuff we could never do in real life, and to
narrate all kinds of strange situaons. In Last Fleet, we use this to create tense
events for the people around the table to enjoy. That’s the key: we’re doing it
for our individual and collecve enjoyment.

Part of that enjoyment is deliberately creang events that are scary, or

unpleasant for the characters. This can be a lot of fun! But if someone at the
table isn’t finding it fun or even finding it distressing, and wants it to stop, part
of your objecve to engage the people at the table is to stop doing it. This
pracce of paying aenon to what people are enjoying and stopping what
we’re doing when it’s no longer enjoyable is oen called safety culture.

Somemes it’s obvious when someone is no longer having fun, but somemes it
isn’t. You can get a long way by listening, paying aenon, and respecng others.
However, it’s helpful to use certain simple techniques to make it easier to avoid stuff
people don’t enjoy. These include:
! Discuss what you enjoy and what you don’t – at the start, during the game,
and whenever it becomes relevant.
! Agreeing at the start on any topics you will avoid enrely (“lines”) or keep
off-screen and not describe (“veils”).
! Signalling when someone has introduced something you don’t want in the
game, by touching a special card (the X Card) or saying a special word (e.g.
“rewind”).
! Leng anyone stop play and/or get up and leave any me they want to.

You can find out all about these techniques on the Black Armada website
(hps://blackarmada.com/safety). We strongly recommend that you take the
me to discuss which tools to use with your group. Using these techniques is

20
 Overview
Keeping it fun for Everyone

easy and if even one person at the table wants to use them, you should,
because you don’t want even one person to have a bad me in your game if you
can help it.

Themes that can come up in Last Fleet that you may want to think about and
discuss include:
! Sex and romance. The Let Loose Move can lead to characters unexpectedly
geng it on. Obviously this shouldn’t be used for anything non-consensual.
You should discuss how comfortable people are with this, and how far you
want to take narraon of sex. Some people may prefer to keep sex out of the
game altogether.
! Violence. This is obviously a major theme of the game. It’s not really
possible to play Last Fleet without the threat of violence, and probably
actual violence, but you can discuss and agree whether you want violence
outside of actual warfare, and how graphic you want to be in describing
violence and/or injuries to characters.
! Authoritarianism. Since the military are a standard component of the game
background, there is the possibility of exploring theme of state oppression.
It’s a good idea to think about whether to centre or avoid this issue, since it
may affect some of you in real life.
! Interrogaon and torture. As noted elsewhere, I don’t recommend centring
this in your game. Nevertheless it’s an obvious route for a game with themes
around intrigue and paranoia. You should discuss how you want to treat
interrogaon and whether you want it on- or off-screen. I’ve never met a
group that didn’t want to ban on-screen torture, if asked.

The above techniques only work if you respect the wishes of the people using
them. Respect and listening to others remains your core tool for keeping the
game fun for everyone, so always fall back on that when all else fails.

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Overview of the game

Teaching the Game

Someone is going to need to read the game and understand the rules. That’s
almost certainly you (by definion). Everyone else probably won’t have read it,
so you’ll need to teach them. Let everyone know that you’re going to give them
an overview so they’re not completely at sea, but they don’t need to remember
everything, because there’s excellent reference sheets and you’ll help explain
each rule when it’s first used.

The best way to teach the game is to break it up into chunks and teach them
what they need to know, when they need to know it. This means:
! Before setup and character creaon, talk through the “introducon”, “role
and objecves” and “your stats” secons above.
! Then go through the setup process – see page 79–88. As part of this you’ll
go through the Playbooks.
! Aer setup and character creaon, but before playing any scenes, talk
through the “rules overview” (skip the PBTA bits if your players are familiar
with PBTA), and “Basic Moves” secons above.
! During play, prompt them to use Moves when it seems appropriate,
especially Raise The Pressure and the holy trinity Moves. Watch out for
players hing Move triggers (whether they meant to or not), and call it out.
! When each new Move is first triggered, take the me to talk through it
systemacally, for at least the first few Moves.
! Remind them to Mark XP when they make Cardinal Moves.
! Pause oen to check if anyone has any quesons.

22
 Overview
Teaching the Game

When you come to teach the Basic Moves, it will help if everyone has a copy of
the Basic Moves reference sheet in front of them. It’s organized in a structured
way which you might use when teaching them:
! Bale and acon-oriented Moves on the first column of page one.
! Polical and invesgave Moves on the second column of page one.
! Social and relaonship Moves, parcularly useful for reducing Pressure, on
the third column of page one.
! Moves you can use to improve on the results of a roll, or Support (or
Interfere with) other character’s acons, on the first column of page two.

If you have me for nothing else, explain Pressure and the holy trinity Moves.
Once you’ve done that, make sure you prompt people to use them during play.
Did they want to use Raise The Pressure to boost that missed roll? Might they
want to Reach Out now to get some Pressure back? Once the group is used to
these rules they’re prey simple, but it can take a bit of pracce to get started.

Once you’ve explained all that, it’s a good idea to reiterate that you’ll be
reminding them how all this works, and they needn’t worry about remembering
every detail. If anyone has a queson, now or later, they can just ask. They
should just focus on playing their characters, responding to what’s happening,
and they won’t go far wrong.

23
24
 Key rules
Key Rules
Framing and ending scenes
When you start play, you’ve got this whole fleet to worry about, thousands of
people, maybe a dozen or more named characters, all sorts of stuff going on. I
hardly need say that we don’t tackle this all at once, any more than a TV show
or book would try to tell you everything that’s going on at once. The game is
instead broken down into scenes: individual chunks of acon or conversaon
(or both) where one or more player characters do their thing. “Framing a
scene” means geng it started by saying where and when it’s happening, who
is there, and what’s going on at the outset. “Ending a scene” means deciding
we’re done with the events at this parcular me and place and can move onto
a new one.

In Last Fleet, scenes can be framed by prey much anyone, but there’s two
typical cases:
! A player character (or maybe more than one) has something they want to
do, or someone they want to talk to, and they ask for a scene where they
can do that. The where and when and who oen flow directly from the
reason for the scene.
! The GM wants to make a GM Move, and they decide to frame a scene
around it. Again, the details of the scene framing prey much write
themselves. For example, the GM might decide that an explosion happens
on board the Alexander, and decide it would be most interesng to do it
while Lt Saxmundham is on board. They ask Lt Saxmundham’s player to
describe what they’re doing on the Alexander, and then narrate the ship
shaking as the bomb goes off.

25
Key Rules

Scenes generally end by common consent. If nobody has anything le to do in

the scene, it can end. Anyone can suggest that it’s me for a scene to end –
obviously, avoid interrupng an interesng interacon or acon sequence to do
this – and the GM in parcular should keep an eye on scenes to make sure they
aren’t dragging on, and encourage people to get to the point if need be.

It’s enrely possible to do stuff in the ficon without framing a scene. Just say
what you want to do, and bam, it’s happened. For example, you might say “I
want to drop by the cargo bay and pick up that package that Isabella told me
about”. We don’t bother to frame a scene, we just nod and move on. In fact it’s
possible to make Moves in this way if appropriate, describing what you’re doing
in the ficon but never actually framing a concrete scene. Of course if anyone
wants to intervene in what you’re doing – a character who wants to get in your
way, or if the GM wants to introduce some kind of drama around it (including if
you make a Move in this way but then roll a Miss), then we don’t want that
playing out in the abstract. We want concrete details, so maybe you get a scene
aer all.

Moves
During scenes players can generally get on with describing what their character
does and speaking their words, and occasionally describing lile bits of the
ficonal context, without worrying about the rules. However, the game contains a
whole bunch of self-contained chunks of rules text called player Moves. A player
Move includes a trigger, usually a ficonal acon or ficonal circumstances, and a
procedure you follow when that trigger is hit. This is generally wrien as “when
<the trigger> happens, do <the procedure>”. The procedure will oen involve
rolling dice, and will usually have both game-mechanical and ficonal
consequences.

26
 moves

Key rules
Player Moves only apply to player characters. NPCs don’t make player Moves, or roll
the dice. When the GM wants an NPC to do something, they make a GM Move (see
page 60–77) and, generally speaking, it just happens. Occasionally their stated acon
may instead trigger a player to try and prevent what they’re doing, in which case you
might roll a player Move instead.

When it comes to player Moves, the ficonal trigger and the mechanics in the
Move are inseparable. If you don’t want to following the procedure described in
the Move, you have to change your acons so that the Move isn’t triggered. If
someone describes acons that seem like they should trigger a Move, anyone
can and should interrupt and ask them if they meant to do that. Make sure you
hold each other to this. The moment people start ignoring the Moves, you may
as well be playing a freeform game – which is fine, but that isn’t Last Fleet.

Equally if you want the mechanical benefit of a player Move, you must take the
trigger acon in the ficon, and say what you’re doing that triggers it. If anyone
says they want to make a Move and picks up the dice without further ado,
anyone can and should interrupt and ask them to describe what they’re actually
doing to trigger the Move. Make sure you hold each other to this. The moment
people start making Moves without describing what they’re doing, you may as
well be playing a board game – which is fine, but again, that isn’t Last Fleet.

There are three main types of player Move: Basic Moves, Role Moves, and
Playbook Moves. Basic Moves are available to everyone, and are detailed in full
on pages 89–112. Role Moves are listed on pages 113–116. They can only be
triggered by someone who has chosen the appropriate Role: Taccian, Marine,
Pilot, Engineer, Invesgator, or Influencer. Playbook Moves are only available to
someone who has chosen them from the relevant Playbook – see pages 130–167.

27
Key Rules

Most player Moves come in the form: When you do X, roll +Stat. In that case,
the player of the character who hits the trigger condion X rolls 2d6 and adds
the relevant Stat. You may also add bonuses or penales of various kinds. No
maer what, the combined modifier to your dice roll can’t be more than +4 or
less than –3.

The Move will usually then go on to tell you what happens when you roll a 10+
(Strong Hit), a 7–9 (Weak Hit), or perhaps just “A Hit” (i.e. 7+). A Strong Hit
generally means you’re going to get what you wanted in the situaon; a Weak
Hit might mean you get a bit less of what you wanted, or you get what you
wanted but there’s a complicaon of some kind, or you don’t get what you
wanted but there’s some compensaon involved. Noce we don’t use the
words “success” and “failure” here, so you might have something bad happen
to you even on a Hit, and you might get some or all of what you want even on a
Miss.

The GM is always free to make an GM Move when someone rolls a Miss (6 or

less). That means they introduce some threat, trouble or consequences into the
scene, usually to the detriment of the person who rolled. Some Moves say
something specific that happens on a Miss – if so, the GM may make a GM Move
as well, if they wish. GM Moves are discussed in more detail on page 60–77.

Some player Moves simply say: When you do X, do Y. In that case, you don’t roll
any dice. The player of the character who hits the trigger condion X does
whatever Y says.

Somemes Playbook Moves tell you to use a different Stat from usual when you
hit a parcular Basic Move trigger condion, and somemes they will tell you to
follow an enrely different procedure for a parcular Basic Move. Pay close
aenon to the wording of the trigger condions for these Moves: the trigger is

28
 Moves

Key rules
nearly always slightly different from the normal version of the Move, and unless
you meet it exactly, you must sll use the normal version of the Move.

There is a special group of Moves called Cardinal Moves which are marked with
an asterisk (*). You gain Experience Points (XP) when you make these Moves,
but you cannot use Pressure to improve your rolls with them. This is explored in
more detail later on in the secons on Pressure and XP.

29
Key Rules

Pressure and Breaking Point

A key mechanic in the game is Pressure. Player characters build up Pressure
when bad stuff happens to them, and can also voluntarily Mark Pressure to get
bonuses to rolls (see the Basic Move Raise The Pressure on page 110). If a
character’s Pressure gets too high, they reach Breaking Point and must do
something risky and/or irraonal to get their Pressure down again.

Your Pressure is recorded on a five-box track. When you are called on by the
GM or by the rules to Mark Pressure, check one box on the Pressure track,
starng on the le and working your way rightwards.

Any me something hurts you, or you do something exhausng, that probably
means you’ll have to Mark Pressure. A lot of Moves will tell you when to Mark
Pressure, but the GM may also call for you to Mark Pressure in appropriate
ficonal circumstances, such as:
! You’ve sustained significant physical harm, but not enough that you’ve got a
seriously debilitang injury like a broken limb or suchlike.
! You’ve suffered a major emoonal blow, like a loved one dying or a mission
failing completely.
! You’ve encountered something horrifying or traumac.
! You’ve done something that otherwise wears you down, like slogging
through several miles of narrow crawlways.

Aer making a roll, you can Raise The Pressure on yourself, pushing yourself
beyond your limits. When you do, Mark up to three Pressure and give yourself
+1 to your roll per Pressure Marked. The usual maximum bonus of +4 applies as
normal. You can’t Raise The Pressure aer rolling a Cardinal Move (those
marked with an asterisk (*)).

30
 Pressure and breaking point

Key rules
You can reduce Pressure through various Moves. The most common are Reach
Out and Let Loose.

When your Pressure hits five, you are at Breaking Point. It is no longer possible
for you to Mark or Erase Pressure, even if a Move says you should, and you may
not make any choice that would automacally cause you to Mark Pressure, unl
you have taken a Breaking Point acon. Breaking Point acons are listed on
your Playbook, and are generally irraonal, risky, or otherwise extreme.

When you take a Breaking Point acon, choose one from the list and do it, Erase
Pressure unl you have exactly two boxes Marked, and Mark the Breaking Point
acon. You can’t choose that as a Breaking Point acon again while it’s Marked.
You can sll take that acon if you like, it just won’t count as a Breaking Point
acon. Each Playbook only has about five or six Breaking Point acons that don’t
lead to inevitable death, capture, or ostracism from the fleet; so spend that
Pressure wisely!

All Playbooks have the Breaking Point acons listed below, and each Playbook
has one or two unique ones too:
! Lash out at someone who maers to you. Tell them what you hate about them,
blame them for your problems, or otherwise push them away.
! Abandon your dues, immersing yourself in your vices, personal priories,
or whatever helps you to forget the pressure you’re under.
! Melt down publicly, leng others see your weakness and displaying your
fear, pain, anger, and/or grief in its rawest form.
! Put yourself or others in immediate danger through foolish, rash, stubborn,
or negligent behaviour.
! Exit the game. Whether through death, breakdown, or some other route,
your character leaves the game. Work with the GM to decide how and when.

31
Key Rules

Breaking Point acons should be provocave and intense. GM, watch out for
people narrang weak Breaking Point acons. Ask them if that is really enough?

Note that a Breaking Point acon can trigger another Move as well. For instance,
lashing out oen triggers Call Someone On Their Shit; abandoning your dues
could trigger Let Loose. Resolve the effect of the Breaking Point acon and then
make the Move as normal. Any Pressure changes that result from the Move are
addional to, and aer, Erasing Pressure down to two boxes Marked.

XP
Player characters have a five-box track for recording Experience Points (XP). You
earn XP every me you make one of the Cardinal Moves, marked with an
asterisk (*). These include the Basic Moves Reach Out, Let Loose,
Support/Interfere, and Raise The Pressure, as well as many individual Playbook
Moves. When you earn XP, you Mark one box on your XP track, starng on the
le and working your way rightwards.

When all five boxes are full, Erase all five and improve your character by gaining an
Advance. All Playbooks have the following Advances, each of which you can take at
most twice, and some have their own unique opons:
! Gain a new Move from your Playbook.
! Gain a new Move from another Playbook.
! Improve a Stat by one (maximum +3).
! Erase a Mark against a Breaking Point acon.

32
 Relationships

Key rules
Relationships
Relaonships mechanically represent how much you care about another
character. Each Relaonship has a target (the other character) and a level from
one to three. You start with some, and you can create more or increase their
level by Reaching Out or through relevant Playbook Moves. You may also
increase the level of a Relaonship if something has happened in the game’s
ficon which has clearly brought you closer together, made you care about
them more (or vice versa), or changed the nature of the Relaonship.

Relaonships are two-direconal – meaning if I have a Relaonship with you,

you have the same level Relaonship with me.

If you have a Relaonship with another character, you can add its level to your
roll, in place of the usual Stat, whenever you make one of the following Moves:
! Support their acon.
! Interfere with their acon.
! Pull Strings to ask them for help (NPCs only).
! Call Them On Their Shit.

The downside is, it would hurt to lose them. Losing the Relaonship would be
very painful, and you therefore must Mark Pressure equal to the Relaonship’s
level any me:
! One of you ends the Relaonship, cung the other out of their social and
emoonal life.
! They betray you completely.
! They die, or you believe they have died.

33
Key Rules

NPCs and mechanical effects

Many of the player’s Moves have potenal effects where another character
could Mark or Erase Pressure or XP, or change the level of a Relaonship. These
mechanical effects need to be considered in a separate way for NPCs.

If they’re being used as leverage – if the Move offers the character a choice
whether to do something to gain a mechanical benefit, for example to Erase
Pressure – then the NPC will act, within reason, to do what they need to in
order to gain the mechanical benefit.

If an NPC is called on to Mark Pressure, the GM should have them do something

similar to a Breaking Point acon. In other words, have them do something
irraonal, risky, or otherwise extreme, or alternavely (if appropriate) become
seriously injured or die. Similarly if they’re called on to Erase Pressure you can
de-escalate any irraonal, risky, or otherwise extreme behaviour they’re
currently exhibing.

In effect, rather than track these various mechanical effects for NPCs, when
they should gain one, the GM immediately makes an appropriate Move. When
they should remove one, the GM immediately rescinds any relevant badness.

Relaonships for NPCs are recorded only on the player’s sheet. (There are no
NPC-on-NPC Relaonships.)

34
 Doom Clocks

Key rules
Doom Clocks
A Doom Clock is simply a circle divided into four Segments. When something
bad is on its way, but not immediately, you can draw a Doom Clock, write down
a future consequence that it’s counng down towards, and Mark one Segment.
From now on, when a significant chunk of game me has passed, Mark another
Segment. When the Doom Clock is full, the consequence happens.

The purpose of a Doom Clock is to create me pressure, and to enable you to
enforce dire consequences while giving the players a fair shake at stopping
them. This helps incenvize the players to spend Pressure in pursuit of avoiding
the dire consequences, pushing them further towards Breaking Point. Because
it’s there to create me pressure, you should put it where everyone can see it,
and normally tell everyone what the consequences of its compleon will be.

What counts as “a significant chunk of me” is at the GM’s discreon, and

varies depending on the situaon. If the Doom Clock is counng down towards
the next in a series of terrorist bomb aacks, it could be hours or even days. If
it’s counng down towards an injured character bleeding out, it could be
minutes or seconds. Oen, it will simply be a case of Marking a Segment every
me someone makes a Move. Or it might be that you Mark a Segment every
me someone does a specific thing: like every me the fleet jumps, if it
represents fuel running low.

The future consequence should be something concrete and irrevocable. I

strongly encourage you to give people Doom Clocks for life-and-death
situaons, with someone dying if the Doom Clock fills. You must write it down,
so that you aren’t tempted to change your mind part-way through.

35
Key Rules

Great future consequences could include:

! You’re bleeding out. You’ve got about five minutes before you bleed to
death.
! Your ship is dead in the water and leaking oxygen. You’ve got about an hour
before you asphyxiate.
! That bomb wasn’t the only one that’s out there. When this Doom Clock fills,
the next one goes off.
! The fleet is out of water. You’ve got three days to find more before people
start dying.

Oponally, you can make it so that every me a Segment marked off, you make
some other smaller Move, ahead of the big one that happens when the Clock is
full. You can use Clocks to map out the steps in some evolving bad thing, if you
like, assigning one to each Segment of the Clock. Again, make the Clock itself
public, and normally tell the players about the Moves it’s generang.

Shortages
In Last Fleet, it’s a given that resources are scarce. Civilizaon has been
destroyed: you can’t just get in a new shipment of ammunion or hire some
new engineers. Against this already low baseline, it’s possible for the fleet to
run crically low of some resource. This is recorded with a specific Doom Clock.

A Shortage could be just about anything, but common ones to record – because
they make a big difference to how effecvely the fleet can funcon – are Food,
Water, Ammunion, Fuel, Fighters, Pilots, and Engineers.

When there’s a Shortage on, it means that almost everyone is having to make
do with much less than they would normally have; many may have nothing at
all; and any major loss of that resource will mean you run out altogether. You
should reinforce that with your every descripon in scenes: hungry workers

36
 Shortages

Key rules
look lean and hunched during a food Shortage, fighters sit idle in the bay if
there’s a pilot Shortage. And reinforce it when people miss a roll, by having
them run out of ammunion, or pass out from hunger, or suchlike.

Meanwhile, the Doom Clock is cking away. I suggest that for things like Fuel,
Ammunion, Fighters, and Pilots, you Mark a Segment when they are used –
e.g. when the fleet jumps (for fuel) or fights a major bale (for ammunion,
fighters, or pilots). Food and Water are in constant use, so should be Marked
with me passing. And other things like Engineers don’t exactly run out, but a
Shortage of them will inevitably mean random mechanical failures which build
up over me, so again they should be Marked with me passing.

What actually happens when the Doom Clock runs out is up to the GM,
depending on the Shortage, but it should be some sort of catastrophic problem.
Perhaps the enemy aacks and there are hardly any fighters to defend the fleet,
so the GM decides to start the bale Doom Clock (see page 192) inflicng two
Arion per Segment instead of one. Maybe during a food Shortage, one of the
ships is taken over by rioters who try to board another ship and take their food.
An explosion happens when a part that should have been replaced isn’t,
because there were no engineers to replace it.

Once you have a Shortage of something, it becomes an urgent problem to

address. Shortages are removed through appropriate acon in the ficon: if you
have a Shortage of pilots, train some more. If you have a Shortage of fuel,
search for an asteroid to mine. The GM will tell you whether a given acon is
enough to tackle the Shortage. You may have to make an appropriate Move
such as Seek Out or Pull Strings.

GM: take care with Shortages. They can potenally put the connued viability
of the fleet as a whole at stake. Once you have a water Shortage, you have a
maer of days before staying true to the ficon dictates that mass death must

37
Key Rules

happen. A Shortage will oen form the main focus for one or more enre
sessions of play, with all other consideraons ignored. So, they should be
unusual events: real crises, to be used sparingly.

Fleet tracks
Alongside the players characters’ stats and tracks, there are two fleet tracks
which monitor the health of the fleet as a whole. These are looked aer by the
GM, but should ideally be somewhere the players can see them, and the players
can ask to look at them at any me. (Note: you may be tempted to ask the
players to look aer these, but I encourage you not to – awareness of where
these tracks, and any acve Shortages and Doom Clocks, which also sit on the
same sheet, is vital to do your job.)

The fleet tracks are:

! Arion
! Momentum

Each track has five boxes. Arion is Marked from le to right, while
Momentum has just one box Marked at a me.

Arion is a measure of how badly off the fleet is right now, in terms of its
ships, its resources and its people including morale. It starts with two boxes
Marked.

There are several situaons where you should Mark Arion:

! When there’s damage to fleet assets (ships, resources, people) but it’s not
enough to cause an outright Shortage.
! Whenever a major problem or defeat occurs publicly enough to harm
morale.

38
 Fleet tracks

Key rules
! When the facons of the fleet are at loggerheads and it’s clear the tension is
close to boiling over.
! In general, when something bad has happened to the fleet – whether
physically or socially – that leaves it less able to cope and closer to falling
apart, without leading to an immediate and concrete problem for the player
characters.

Conversely, anything which improves the fleet’s capability or resources, or

boosts morale, without having an immediate and concrete benefit for the
player characters, might lead to Erasing Arion. Acquiring new resources can
reduce Arion, as can repairing damage to the fleet. See the Engineer Role
Move (page 114–115) for more details on the laer. Pulling Strings can
somemes reduce Arion. A major victory or visible progress normally
reduces Arion because of the effect on fleet morale. And there are Playbook
Moves which can have this effect too.

When all five boxes are Marked, Erase Arion unl there are exactly two boxes
Marked. The GM then unleashes havoc with an appropriate Move. This could
manifest as physical destrucon: a ship is destroyed outright, killing hundreds of
people; or some important resource supply is lost or contaminated. Or it could
manifest as social disorder: riots on the fleet, an aempted coup, a brutal
crackdown. It can be any problem or collecve acon that could be driven by
the slow build-up of loss, damage, and strain on the fleet.

GM Moves that result from the Arion track filling up may generate further
mechanical effects such as Doom Clocks, Shortages, or Momentum changes, but
they should not in themselves lead to the immediate marking of Arion.

Momentum measures how the war is going. Each box of the track has a
modifier next to it starng at –2 (the lemost box) and running up to +2 (the
rightmost box). You don’t Mark or Erase Momentum the way you do with other

39
Key Rules

tracks, it’s more like a Stat: but a Stat that moves up and down in response to
changes in the ficon. At the start of the game, you should normally set
Momentum at –1, to represent the fact the fleet is losing the war but not in a
catastrophic rout (yet). When Momentum is low, the human fleet is desperately
fleeing, mostly reacng to aacks and other problems, with lile hope of pro-
acvely aacking the enemy. When Momentum is high, the human fleet is in a
stable posion and ready to take the bale to the enemy. This is reflected in the
Momentum Move (see page 110–114).

When there’s a major turning point in the war, the GM can change Momentum.
A decisive victory or defeat, or the destrucon or acquision of a major
resource, for example. Momentum can change incrementally or in one big
jump, as appropriate. GM, consider somemes making a Momentum change
the explicit stakes of a mission or bale, so that the players understand how
important it is. Of course, you won’t always know in advance: things don’t
always go the way you expect.

40
41
Key rules
GMing the Game

GMing the game

Overview
As GM, you’re doing three things:
! Prey much all the me, as needed: Bringing the world and the characters
in it to life by describing the environment and the people and things in it,
saying what’s going on, taking on the roles of NPCs, and (somemes) passing
those things over to another player by asking a queson.
! A bit less oen, but sll fairly frequently, when called to: Intervening in a
more forceful way by making a Move – a discrete change to the ficon that
injects energy and momentum into the game and either changes the
direcon of the story or moves it further down its current trajectory. Your
Moves are listed on page 60–71.
! Responding when the players make Moves: Somemes by making choices
from their Move lists, somemes by making a Move (if they roll a 6 or less),
and somemes by simply connuing to bring the ficon to life in response to
however the world has changed now that they’ve made their Move.

You will typically have a role as a kind of facilitator/referee as well. Aer all, you
are most likely the one most familiar with the rules. It’s important to
understand that you do not have sole responsibility for this, or sole authority
over the rules. The game asks you and the players to follow the rules equally, so
if they point out a rule that would stop you doing something, that’s fair play:
you can’t do it, whatever it is, and it’s totally within their expected role to point
it out. Just be aware, the players are in less of a good posion to understand
and interpret the rules, so helping them to do so is part of your job too.

42
 The GM’s Moves

The GM’s Moves

Your Core Moves are:
! Signal what’s coming.

GMing
! Put something at stake.
! Make them choose.
! Bring the consequences to bear.

You can get by just fine with the Core Moves, but if somemes it’s helpful to
have more specific Themac Moves to draw on:
! Set the clock cking…
! Make demands…
! Stoke suspicion…
! Someone loses it…
! Take something away…
! Kill their darlings…
! Unleash mayhem…
! …and impose a mechanical consequence, as established.
! Modify a Move that a player is about to make.
! Make a Threat Move.

These Moves are set out in more detail on page 60–61 (Core Moves) and page
62–71 (Themac Moves). But before we get into them in detail, let’s talk a bit
about when and how you should make Moves, and run the game more generally.

43
GMing the Game

When to make a Move

You should only (and always) make a GM Move when:
! The dice demand it.
! The ficon demands it.
! Pacing demands it.

You always make a Move when someone rolls a 6.

You can also make one when ficon requires a Move. What I mean by the ficon is
the facts as you’ve established them at the table, or in your prep. Just remember,
something that’s only in your head doesn’t count: spell it out at the table, or put it
in your prep, to make it part of the ficon. In other words, it has to be something
that you’ve commied to, not just something you’re thinking about.

Finally, you can make a Move if everyone’s waing for something to happen, or
you can tell the scene has stalled, or it’s needed to get a scene started, or the
wider game’s events seem to have hit a rut: to get things moving.

Of course, in all cases, the Move should be something that seems to follow from
the current ficonal situaon or, at the very least, doesn’t seem illogical or
wildly improbable.

When you’re called on to make a Move, you decide how hard or so a Move to
make. Are the consequences of your Move immediate, imminent, or further
off? Do they directly affect the player characters, or are they more indirect?
How severe are those consequences? Each of those dials can be set to harder or
soer. It’s a good idea to start out so and, when the players fail to act (or act,
but fail), make your Moves steadily harder. But somemes you’ll see an
opportunity to make a harder Move right away. If the dice, the ficon, or pacing
demand it – go right ahead.

44
 Responding with a GM move

Oen, as you describe the world and bring in NPCs, you’ll realize aer the fact
that you made a Move without thinking about it. This happens a lot with
Signalling What’s Coming, which is an integral part of describing the world.
That’s ok, these rules aren’t meant to force you to think about every lile thing

GMing
you say. But the harder the Move, the more it ought to be jusfied by the dice,
the ficon, or pacing.

Responding with a GM Move

The simplest mode of play in Last Fleet goes something like this:
1 GM Signals What’s Coming.
2 Players say what they are doing about that.
3 GM assesses the likely outcome of the players’ acons and responds by
Bringing The Consequences To Bear.
4 (Repeat steps 1–3 as appropriate.)
This simple loop can be used to resolve many, perhaps most, situaons.

You’ll noce that there are no player Moves in there. You might be tempted to
reach for the dice and try to have someone make a player Move every me the
players do something interesng or risky. But that’s not how Last Fleet works.
Player Moves only happen when their specific ficonal trigger has been hit. If
they do something that they ought to be able to do, and no Move trigger has
been hit, but you feel like something ought to happen, then that’s probably a
sign you should make a Move of your own!

45
GMing the Game

Here are some good approaches to this:

! If it isn’t risky and nobody is trying to stop them, they just do it! Bring The
Consequences Of Their Acons To Bear, as appropriate.
! If someone else is trying to stop them, say what the other person is about to
do (Signal What’s Coming), and what will happen if they succeed (Put
Something At Stake), then ask the player what they do now. Maybe their
next acon will trigger a player Move, or take them out of danger altogether.
If not, Bring The Consequences To Bear.
! If it’s risky, tell them what the risk is (Signal What’s Coming/Put Something
At Stake), then ask them what they do now. Again, you can then Bring The
Consequences To Bear if appropriate.

Handling Player Moves

Remember: if the ficonal trigger for a player’s Move hasn’t been hit, it doesn’t
happen. Conversely though, if the ficonal trigger for a player’s Move has been
hit, you must follow what that Move requires.

Player Moves are powerful tools for intervening in the ficon. They interrupt
the simple loop described above, and force specific outcomes, oen dependent
on the roll of the dice. Do not be tempted to ignore those outcomes.

Quite oen, player Moves generate new problems that lead to the acon
snowballing in excing ways. Aer every player Move the situaon has most
likely changed and you may need to pause to reassess and communicate what’s
changed to the players, Signalling What’s Coming and Pung Things At Stake
as appropriate.

Somemes a player Move resolves a situaon completely. If, aer compleng a

player Move, you realize that there is no longer anything at stake in the current
scene, it may be me to end the scene and move on to something new.

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 Principles

Principles
Following the rules will take you a long way, but to make Last Fleet work really
well, you need to GM the game in a parcular way. The Principles listed below
describe how to do that. They’re not rules as such, but they’re not oponal

GMing
either. If you don’t follow them, you’ll end up with a completely different (and
less good) game.

The Principles are:

! No mercy.
! Make space for interpersonal drama.
! Make them care.
! Everyone is up to something.
! Make scarcity ubiquitous.
! Make the ficon and the mechanics transparent.
! Failure is not an opon.

No mercy
The characters have lots of ways to make sure their dice rolls succeed: they can
spend Pressure, Support each other, Pull Strings, use their powerful Playbook
Moves or, when desperate, Wait Helplessly. So when they fail, it has to mean
something. The consequences have to be significant. When they’ve had their
chance to act and things didn’t work out, you should be brutal in enforcing
those consequences. You want them to walk away from that scene wishing
they’d spent that Pressure.

Last Fleet has a disnct rhythm between acon and problem-solving scenes,
and interpersonal scenes. The former are high-pressure, oen high-stakes
situaons, where you as GM are constantly in the players’ faces telling them

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GMing the Game

about some threat or issue and telling them the results of their acons. The
laer are quieter affairs, somemes explosively dramac but very much more
focused on the players. “No mercy” applies mostly to the former. Don’t have
the result of a failed Let Loose roll somehow cause death and destrucon,
unless the situaon is absolutely screaming for it.

Make space for interpersonal drama

Last Fleet gives you ample threats and problems for the fleet to deal with:
enemy aackers, infiltrators, resource shortages, and so on. You should make
me for the group to deal with these issues. But as well as spotlighng this
acon-oriented play, make sure you allow me for interpersonal drama. The
game really sings when you’ve got characters making demands on each other,
geng in each other’s faces, expressing their human flaws.

So make sure that you allow ample me for that. Give the players chunky
periods when it’s less manic, when there isn’t an immediate aack on the
horizon, so that they can talk to each other. And during those periods, introduce
NPCs who push on the players’ characters in interesng ways, and make me
for those conversaons too.

Err on the side of making things quiet, because as soon as you introduce an
aack or major crisis, everyone will want to focus on that. It can be quite hard
to extract yourself from acon-oriented play once you’ve started. So, when
you’re in an acon-oriented situaon, lean away from escalaon and
introducing new threats; and when you’re in a quieter period, lean away from
introducing urgent problems.

Note in parcular that the Momentum Move tends to force things into an
acon-oriented space. That’s why it calls for you to roll when there’s been a
prolonged quiet period – to help protect that quiet me.

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 Principles

Make them care

Focus in on a small number of characters and bring them vividly to life. Quieter
periods are a great me to start doing this. What are they doing to keep from
going crazy? What are they doing to make their lives beer? What are they

GMing
doing to help their loved ones? Who are they secretly fucking, who are they in
debt to? What are their hopes and dreams? What are their fears and
prejudices? Make each character idiosyncrac and real. Give them names,
faces, needs, and strive to connect them to the players so that they care what
happens to that character.

I advise you to make as many characters as possible likeable. Don’t fill your
game with misanthropic individuals, because the players won’t care that much
if they die. Instead, make some of your NPCs uncomplicatedly nice. Make them
helpful, supporve, resourceful. Have them do favours for the characters, make
sure they have their backs. Even for those who aren’t such wonderful people,
make sure they have at least one thing that make the players like them –
perhaps they’re great for a wild night on the les, or maybe they’re incredibly
loyal. Do this even when the character is an antagonist; perhaps even the
bullying colonel is someone who will never leave a soldier behind.

You can apply this Principle more widely. For example, give each ship a
personality and make it at least a lile lovable. Certainly, show how it maers in
some way. And populate that ship with at least one notable character the
players will like.

Later, when you’ve made them care, you’ll use the emoonal aachment you’ve
created against them, pung the characters they care about in peril. See the GM
Move Kill Their Darlings (page 66) for more.

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GMing the Game

Everyone is up to something
An important dimension of Last Fleet is compeng agendas. Facons pulling the
characters in different direcons. NPCs who are likable and loyal but who also
have their own beliefs and goals. So, give every NPC and facon something that
they currently need or want. This could be something personal, like they lost
their daughter during the evacuaon and want to find her. Or it could be
something that affects the whole fleet, like they want to get rid of the current
commander of the fleet.

Partly this is about making sure that, when a facon or character features in a
scene, they have something to say. Partly it’s about providing a raonale for
acons that don’t always align perfectly with the fleet’s needs, creang tension.
Partly it’s about pung the characters under pressure to do what this person or
facon wants. And partly it’s just about reinforcing the theme of the fleet
straining under pressure, ready to fly apart at any moment.

Whenever you’re considering what acon that an NPC or facon might take in a
parcular scene, think about what would further their goal in this situaon. If
they can’t take acon themselves, who could they Make Demands on to help
them? (See page 63.) What might they ask a player character to do? Or what
obstacle could they work towards removing?

Whenever anything happens that helps or hurts their goal, have them react.
Whenever someone asks them for something, consider it through the lens of
their goal – if it helps them achieve it, they’ll be in favour of it. If it hurts, they’ll
be against it. And the easiest way to get them to do what you want will always
be to offer them something that helps them meet their goal. Remember as well
that NPCs hold their goal close to their heart: stand in their way and you’ll be
seen as an enemy, assist them and they’ll see you as a friend.

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 Principles

NPCs and facons needn’t be completely one-dimensional. Somemes they do

things that aren’t related to that one goal. But having that one goal helps you
make quick decisions about them and their behaviour.

Part of this is to consider what it might take to make an NPC or facon act

GMing
against the interests of the fleet. Somemes this is really easy: if they’re
actually a traitor or criminal, their every acon will be undermining the war
effort. Somemes it’s less direct: if my sick brother will die without medicine, I’ll
consider stealing from sick bay, even though I know that medicine is needed by
others. When Someone Loses It (see pages 64–65), one opon is to have them
pursue their goal hard, without regard for praccality or raonality.

Make scarcity ubiquitous

The human fleet is far from home, away from any supply chain. There’s not
enough of just about everything, even at the best of mes. When there’s an
actual Shortage on then it becomes really serious, so that nearly everyone
doesn’t have enough. What there is, is oen less good than you might want –
it’s a substute, second best, a bodged-together version of what’s required.

You can take this too far: clearly, the fleet’s ships must be funconal and
airght, or the fleet would be destroyed. There must be food available, or
everyone would starve. But lace your descripons with just enough references
to the effects of that underlying scarcity to remind the players of the situaon
they’re in.

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GMing the Game

This means thinking about:

! What people are doing to get hold of scarce things. (Consider having them
Make Demands for these things.)
! What they are doing to cope.
! How people are helping each other.
! What people are using in place of what they’d ideally want to be using.
! What’s been repaired or jury-rigged.

When things get really bad, think about:

! Who is desperate, and what they’re doing about it.
! Who has exceeded their limits, and how long they’ve got before it leads to
disaster.
! What might be suddenly unavailable, or broken, at just the wrong moment.

Make the ficon and the mechanics transparent

The situaon in the ficon is conveyed enrely by what is said at the table. As
GM, you have primary responsibility for describing the world, NPCs, what is
happening now, and what might be about to happen. The players can’t make
good decisions if they don’t have the full informaon, so give it to them. If they
seem to make a bad decision, check in with them – did they realize the
implicaons of what they’re saying? If there’s something you think they ought
to be considering, tell them.

That includes mechanical consequences. There are a lot of abstracted

mechanics in this game. Pressure. Arion. +1 Forward. It’s your job to translate
those consequences into ficonal reality, and to make it clear when something
that might happen in the ficon would have a mechanical consequence. Tell
them “If you do that you’ll have to Mark one Pressure.”

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 Principles

Make it as clear as possible what is going on ficonally and mechanically, what

might happen ficonally and mechanically, and what the results of their acons
might be ficonally and mechanically. Lay it all out on the table, and let them
decide what to do about it.

GMing
Failure is not an opon
When you’re narrang the results of the characters’ acons, make sure you’re
doing it in a way that supports the idea that they are competent, effecve
individuals. Obviously, the characters don’t always succeed at everything they
set out to do. But when things go wrong, it shouldn’t ever be because the
player character was incompetent or screwed up. Think of some other reason
why things went wrong.

So what happens when someone rolls a Miss?

Well, they might not fail at all. Perhaps they succeed at what they were trying
to do, but the situaon evolves and/or some new threat appears, so that their
success doesn’t net them the victory they were hoping for. Or they succeed but
there’s a complicaon – even though they got their victory, now there’s a new
situaon to deal with. Or they succeed, but too well – they get some
unexpected consequence from success that might not be what they wanted.

Or perhaps they fail, but it isn’t because of their own inadequacy. There are lots
of ways for this to happen:
! Too good! You didn’t get shot down because you’re a bad pilot, you got shot
down because they’re an ace shooter. This makes the enemy seem scarier,
and makes the players want to win even more. Note: once you have decided
someone is “too good”, that means they’re a significant opponent – take
every opportunity to keep bringing them back, to give the players something
to hate.

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GMing the Game

! Something breaking from wear and tear or because it was jury-rigged in the
first place. That helps to ram home the scarcity of the situaon – everything
is in short supply, everything is second-hand or kludged together from parts.
! Overwhelmed. They could have won a fair fight, but they’re outnumbered,
outgunned or otherwise put in an unfair posion.
! External obstacle/bad luck. They had their shot lined up, but a mely
barrage forced them to take cover. They would have tracked down the spy,
but they escape while the ship is on lockdown.
! What they’re doing turns out to be impossible. They were out of range all
along. They were searching for water but there is no water source to find.

Never describe what happens in a way that makes them look stupid,
incompetent, or weak. Somemes they’ll do that for themselves, and
somemes an NPC will try to do it; but you as GM should never do it.

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 Techniques

Techniques
This secon describes a list of things you as GM can do to enhance your game,
but which aren’t part of the rules. They’re oponal, in the sense that you can
choose when to use them or even whether to use them: but definitely

GMing
recommended.

Speak to the ficon

It helps people’s sense of immersion in the story if you refer to people by their
character names, not their real-life names. “Commander Pask, there’s an angry
mob outside your office, demanding your resignaon. What do you do?”, not
“Simon, there’s an angry mob outside Commander Pask’s office”.

It’s also a good idea to talk about ficon, not mechanics, wherever possible. In
parcular it’s rarely necessary to say the name of a GM Move out loud. So like
“you cut the blue wire, and the red light stops flashing; but parally concealed
behind the first device, you spot a second – and less easy to access”, not “I’m
going to Signal What’s Coming in the form of a second bomb”. Talking about the
ficon instead of the rules as much as possible makes the world feel more real.

You’ll find you somemes have to use player names, and quite oen refer to
mechanics. Don’t worry about that! Just keep in the ficon as much as you can.

Go with your gut

The players are at the table making everything up as they go. When you as GM
say “you see West sneaking about in engineering aer hours, what do you do?”
they don’t have an answer planned – they just make it up. In line with your
objecve to play to find out what happens, that’s what you should do too.

Sure, it’s nice to have a bit of prep done to think about what might be
happening in the fleet right now, and what clouds are gathering on the horizon.

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GMing the Game

But you shouldn’t be wedded to your ideas about what might happen next, and
you definitely shouldn’t have a pre-scripted story.

When you’re making stuff up, go with the first thing you think of by default.
That insncve first idea is oen the best. By all means draw on your prep for
ideas, but be prepared to do something different if that’s what seems right in
the moment.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t think before you speak. But oen the thing that
you’ve chewed over and carefully figured out is not as good – not as credible, as
true to what’s happening right there in the scene – as your first thought. Trust
that first thought. Use it.

Ask quesons
The other players at the table are a fantasc resource. They’re full of their own
ideas and imaginings about what your game world looks like, who your NPCs
are and what they might be up to. When you don’t have a clear idea for some
creave decision yourself, ask another player.
“Where do people go to drink on this ship?”

“Who is the captain of the Agamemnon?”

“It’s two hours aer the bale finished, what would you be doing right now?”

“I’m not sure if Switchback trusts the Commander, what do you think?”

“What do Corax fighters look like?”

Doing this spreads the creave burden, it makes your job easier. If your first
insnct isn’t giving you a clear read, someone else’s might be. It also brings the
players into your world – they’re not just spectators, they’re helping you create it.

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 Techniques

There’s one parcular type of queson somemes called a loaded or

provocave queson, where you decide something important and then ask a
player to tell you how it happened. Something like “what are you doing down
on C Deck?” – you’ve basically told the player they’re going to be down on C

GMing
Deck, presumably because you think you can frame a potenally interesng
scene there, and asked them to come up with a reason. This is great, but use it
carefully. There are some RPGs where it’s cool to say out of nowhere something
like “how come you shot Switchback?” and the player then has to improvise
why they did that. In this game, that’s not generally an ok thing to do. If you
want to prompt a player to do something like this, you can ask “hey, do you
think you might shoot Switchback now?”, but unless the rules specifically say
otherwise (notable excepons include Let Loose and Sleeper Agent), let the
players decide their acons for themselves.

Share the spotlight around

It goes without saying that you want every player to get plenty of me “on
screen” playing their character, right? It’s a good idea to track who has had
spotlight me. Simply write each player’s name down and put a check mark
against their name every me they are in a scene.

It’s also good to try and mix up who is in scenes with who. If some player
characters aren’t ever in scenes together, you can contrive reasons for them to
be in the same place, just to see what happens.

Even beer, try to contrive reasons for two players to connect up to the same
NPC – the more links there are between two characters, the more reason there
is for them to interact. Asking a loaded queson can be quite good here –
quesons like “why are you spending Saturday evening with Blackjack?” allows
the players to help you define an interesng relaonship with an NPC. The best
is where two players have different sorts of relaonship with the same NPC, so

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GMing the Game

that when something happens to that NPC it will affect them in very different
ways. These “PC–NPC triangles” lead to the player characters having interests
that overlap or conflict, which oen leads to fun.

Of course, don’t forget that you, as GM, take up spotlight me. Every scene that
you’re in as an acve parcipant, playing an NPC or pushing forward threats,
means less me for others. Realiscally, the GM probably will get more spotlight
me than others. But lean towards framing scenes where player characters can
just talk to each other, as much as you can. And definitely don’t worry if you’re sat
on your hands some of the me: some of the most memorable RPG scenes are
interacons between two player characters where the GM doesn’t say a word.

Hard scene framing

You can, when appropriate, start a scene with stuff already happening, even
quite bad stuff. Like “you arrive in the system but before you know it there’s a
wing of enemy fighters on top of you, and you were forced to retreat into a
nearby asteroid field; you’re stuck there now, parked on the underside of an
asteroid, while the enemy fighters search the field for you – what do you do?”

Doing this sort of thing oen involves making a Hard Move, and if so you can’t
just do it any old me, you have to follow the usual rules for making GM Moves.

Fast forward, flash back

Roleplaying games tend to roll forward me in a more-or-less linear way,
skipping over dull bits like when the characters are asleep, or when they have to
travel somewhere. But you can and should fast forward me more dramacally
when you feel like it.

“It’s a couple of weeks later, and it’s been kind of quiet for a while, when a ship
jumps in right in the middle of the fleet.” Legit.

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 Techniques

You can also use flashbacks occasionally when you feel you need to flesh out a
relaonship or provide context to present-day acon. This isn’t the kind of
game where you use flash backs to retroacvely give the player characters
some sort of advantage, though: it should be used for making up backstory on

GMing
the fly and not much else.

Draw maps
Everyone loves a good map! They’re parcularly useful for helping everyone to
grok the layout of bales. Don’t sweat scale or anything like that, since aer all
there’s no rules for how fast anyone can move, or weapon ranges for that maer.
But feel free to say things like “the enemy mother ship is over here, out of range
– it’ll be about 30 seconds before your fighters are within weapons range”.

What do you do?

“What do you do?” is sort of a catchphrase for PBTA games. Some games tell
you to say it aer every Move, but that can get a bit mechanical. Really, the
point is, pause oen to give the players the chance to act. Ask them what they
do next. Feel free to suggest some opons. What the player characters do is
what the story is all about, so make sure you’re always focusing on that.

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GM Moves

GM Moves
Core Moves
The Core Moves are the simplest way of describing the components of what you
do as GM. In an absolute nutshell: describe what’s happening, what is about to
happen, and what could happen, then let the players respond. As they respond,
react by saying what the results are, what’s happening now, what’s about to
happen, and what could happen.

Signal What’s Coming or Put Something At Stake

Describe the signs that something bad is coming. Somemes that’s simple and
direct: “An enemy fleet just jumped in – they’re launching fighters, what do you
do?” Somemes it’s very much not: “Lieutenant Swi furrows her brow and
bites her lip, like she’s considering saying something, but then decides not to.
What do you do?” Let them decide whether to act and, if they don’t, follow
through by Bringing The Consequences To Bear.

Describe situaons that the characters could exploit, if they’re willing to take the
necessary acon. Highlight the opportunity – what it might be worth and, if
appropriate, what it might cost. Let them decide whether to act, and if they do,
follow through by Bringing The Consequences To Bear.

Say What’s At Stake with a given course of acon. Tell them what they’ll get if
they succeed – or what will happen if they fail. Tell them the ficonal
consequences (“unless you can stop those fighters aacking, the Alexander will
get blown up”) and the mechanical consequences (“If the Alexander blows up,
your fuel supplies will be crippled and I’ll create a Shortage and Doom Clock for
that”). Or just flag that something or someone is in danger – that’s pung it at
stake too, even if you aren’t saying it’s going to take a hit right now.

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 Core moves

Use this Move to warn them what Move you might make in future, or what
opons you might pick from a player-facing Move’s list.

Make Them Choose

Oen, it’s fun to telegraph compeng problems, opportunies, or threats. Give
them a sadisc choice to make – the bad guys are bearing down on your best
friend’s fighter, dead in the water, but if you go to help her then another bunch

GM moves
of them will blow up the fleet’s main fuel ship. Or you can give them a more
pleasant choice, perhaps between two opportunies: they can’t have both.

Somemes the choice is more mixed. You’ve got me to salvage valuable
equipment from this ship before it plunges into a nearby star. But if you do, you’ll
be at risk from the enemy fleet that you know is on the other side of the planet.

Bring The Consequences To Bear

Once you’ve signalled a problem is coming, if the players fail to act (or act, but
fail their roll), the problem materializes. Make the consequences of that
problem feel real. Similarly, if you signalled an opportunity and they seize it,
now they get the benefits of their acons. If they fail to, it slips beyond reach.

Once you’ve done that, don’t forget to make any mechanical consequences
happen, too (see below).

To reiterate: a lot of the game is simply telegraphing something that is about to

happen, or will happen if you don’t do something, or might happen if you do
something; and then making that come true.

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GM Moves

Thematic Moves
The Themac Moves are specific ways you can bring your Core Moves to bear,
that highlight the themes of Last Fleet. If you’re at a loss for what to do, they’ll
give you some good ideas that will keep the game on-genre. On the other hand,
if you already have an idea for a Move, you can prey much guarantee that you
can make it by Signalling What’s Coming, Pung Something At Stake, Making
Them Choose or Bringing The Consequences To Bear. If that’s the case, you
don’t need to read this list, just go ahead and do the thing you had in mind.

Set The Clock Ticking…

A good way to ramp up the pressure on the characters is to make it clear that
they only have a limited me before something bad happens. Do this with
immediate-term threats like “the hole in the hull is bleeding oxygen – you’ve
got about half an hour before you asphyxiate” and “you’re hidden for now, but
those soldiers are methodically searching the area – it’ll be a maer of minutes
before they find you, if you’re lucky”. Do it with less immediate threats like
“there’s a munous atmosphere aboard the ship, and although the crew are
obeying orders for now you can sense it won’t be long before they take maers
into their own hands”. Do it with long-term threats like “you’ve got about three
months’ worth of food – you’ve got that long to figure out a way to feed the
fleet longer-term”.

You can simply Signal that something is on its way soon, and that if they don’t act
it will be too late. Alternavely, a harder-edged way to make this feel real is to
start a Doom Clock. See pages 35–36 for details on how to do this.

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 Thematic moves

Make Demands…
Have a facon or NPC demand something from a character. This could be
something concrete, like a specific item or acon they want them to take. Or it
could be something more in the social/emoonal space, like they want you to
admit you’re wrong about something, or to display affecon for them.

Make it something they won’t want to give; something that they’ll regret later; or
something that will advance the relaonship in a meaningful way. Ideally all three!

GM moves
If they won’t do it, or try but fail, that’s a good me to reduce a Relaonship.
For a demand that is really major or highly significant, fulfilling it might trigger
increasing a Relaonship.

Stoke Suspicion…
A constant danger for the fleet is infiltraon by the enemy. Almost as dangerous
is the threat to the cohesion of the fleet from selfishness, division, and
corrupon. This Move is for when a character and facon acts against the
interests of the fleet, pursue their own agenda or acvely betraying the human
race. Equally, it is for when someone decides to invesgate or hurl accusaons,
jusfied or not.

Acng against the interests of the fleet could mean anything from hoarding
food for themselves to more serious criminal acvies, right up to helping the
enemy or launching a terrorist aack.

A soer version of this Move is to Signal What’s Coming by introducing

behaviour that seems out of the ordinary or otherwise suspicious, or by
revealing personal problems (debts, addicon, desperate need, blackmail) that
might compromise a person. Then if nobody acts, take it to the next logical step.

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GM Moves

You can also use this Move to have an NPC become suspicious of a character:
they invesgate them or accuse them of something. This is a great way to put
someone under pressure when they’ve been up to something they shouldn’t.
Suspicion can come from all quarters – a concerned friend, a hard-ass superior
officer, an official invesgaon.

The party under suspicion needn’t be a player character. When one NPC starts
accusing another of treachery, the players will be forced to act as adjudicator.
They’ll also be forced to consider whether there really might be treachery afoot
– and if so, who it is that’s the perpetrator.

This Move is a good way to push players into making the Seek Out or Cover Up
Moves; players might also target a suspicious person or retaliate against a
dogged accuser using Call Someone On Their Shit. If they don’t, then the
consequences should be commensurate with the nature of the offence and the
status of the invesgator. A concerned friend looking into someone’s alcoholism
might give them a quiet word with an implied threat to report them. An official
invesgaon could have much more serious consequences.

Always consider the social consequences if someone is invesgated, accused,

proven guilty, or exonerated. Whose opinion has changed? Who will take acon?

Someone Loses It…

The people of Last Fleet live under enormous pressure. The destrucon of most
of the human race, the loss of their homes, the shortages, paranoia about
enemy agents, and the constant fear of an enemy aack. With this Move,
someone cracks and has an emoonal outburst or does something selfish,
irraonal, or destrucve. Think of it as Breaking Point for NPCs.

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 Thematic moves

Watch for NPCs who are in difficult situaons, and consider how far that
situaon would have to go for them to snap. If a bad situaon worsens,
consider who might have reached their limit. Then show them breaking by:
! Doing something stupid, risky, pointless or self-destrucve.
! Venng their emoons at someone, perhaps publicly.
! Taking drasc or selfish acon to push their own needs or wants.
! Sacrificing themselves through dangerous acon in bale.

GM moves
Facons can also lose it. They finally lose paence and push for their goals via the
most direct route available, regardless of the consequences. Or perhaps they lash
out at a scapegoat within or outside their ranks, venng anger and frustraon.

Finally, the ordinary people of the fleet can lose it en masse. Protests, riong,
loong, for example. Or more self-destrucve behaviour, like the spread of
drunkenness or drug addicon as they try to calm their fears.

Whoever is losing it, make it concrete by describing what the players see and
hear. Don’t have someone quietly lose it in their bunkroom. Give them
something to respond to.

This is a parcularly good Move to make when the Arion track fills up. Have
an individual or group react with panic or ruthless acon to the growing
pressures on the fleet.

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GM Moves

Take Something Away…

Part of making scarcity ubiquitous is that somemes things break or become
unexpectedly unavailable. Equally, things can be damaged or lost in the middle
of a scene. Think of something they’d find useful right now, or at any rate in the
near future, and take it away.

You can also use this Move to take away opons and opportunies. Block their
way out. Have the fleet jump away without them. Put a sentry between them
and where they were heading. Give them an urgent mission so they can’t
pursue their personal agenda.

Kill Their Darlings…

If you’re following your Principles, you’ve created characters that the players
care about. Now, hurt them. When a disease ravages the ship, you take
someone they care about and give them the disease. Put them in sick bay,
wasng away. Or beer yet, have them show up to their staon pale and drawn
because they spent the night next to someone else’s sickbed. If you’ve done
your job well, the players will feel the pain of these characters and be
movated to do something about it.

The hardest form of this Move is to do exactly what it says on the n: Kill Their
Darlings. When the enemy have a ship in their sights, think who is on that ship.
When they screw up their dice rolls and the enemy fighters come screaming in,
don’t shrink from killing off those beloved characters. The anguish the players
feel when they know they’ll never have a scene with that character again is
what makes it feel like the war maers.

And by the way – when you literally killed someone, don’t forget to apply
Pressure loss from any Relaonships players had with them. Even if they didn’t,
you should ask them if they cared about that character dying. If so, they must
Mark Pressure.

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 Thematic moves

Unleash Mayhem…
You can use this Move to introduce big, disrupve events like a bomb going off,
the enemy fleet aacking, or a riot. Somemes these Moves are the result of a
slow build-up of low-level effects over me, which you will have signalled over
and over. Somemes it will seem to come out of nowhere.

The water tanks rupture, jesoning vast amounts of water into space. The
refuelling ship catches fire. An astro-navigaon computer error jumps one of

GM moves
the ships into a star and it is destroyed. Food supplies are spoiled, disease
breaks out. A bomb kills the command staff of the capital ship. An enemy
mothership jumps in and starts spewing fighters.

This is a serious Move, one which will have far-reaching implicaons and hugely
ramp up the perceived threat level. By doing this you put the safety of the
enre human race at stake, right now. Pilots will scramble. Engineers will rush
to contain damage. Civilians watch with bated breath. I’m labouring the point
slightly, because I want you to use this Move sparingly. Once you’ve done it,
you’re a few bad rolls away from total carnage: consequences that will
dominate the game for sessions to come. You’ll also make this fight the sole
focus of play for a decent chunk of game me.

With that said, Last Fleet is about the human race on the brink, fleeing from an
inhuman adversary. Somemes you have to make that real.

Don’t forget, too, that there can be smaller bales; lesser disasters. A handful
of enemy fighters can be encountered away from their main fleet, or enemy
footsoldiers can be found on the ground. A single ship could be sabotaged, or
one docking bay blockaded by protesters. Smaller events also telegraph the
potenal for future danger: shoot down these fighters, or they’ll be back with
reinforcements. Placate these protesters or there will be a riot tomorrow.

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GM Moves

Whatever the event is, you’ll need to consider the immediate mechanical
consequences, and what further mechanical consequences might be at stake if
no acon is taken. Spell them out, so the players can scramble to limit the
damage.

…and impose mechanical consequences, as established

There are a bunch of mechanical consequences you can inflict on a character,
when the ficon jusfies them. I’ll list them in full in a moment. The important
thing to understand about these is that you cannot simply impose a mechanical
consequence without having established it in the ficon first.

So when it comes to mechanical consequences, Moves come in pairs: say

what’s happened in the ficon, and then inflict the mechanical consequence
you’ve just established a ficonal basis for. That’s why this Move starts with
“and”, because you should never make it on its own – first say what’s changed
in the ficon.

Of course, your decision-making doesn’t have to flow in that direcon. You can
decide “I want Darius to Mark Pressure… what could cause that?” Or equally,
you can say “This situaon seems unbearably difficult for Darius, I think I’ll he
should Mark Pressure.” Either is equally fine.

As a rule of thumb, if a player-facing Move requires a mechanical consequence,

don’t duplicate that same consequence using an GM Move.

So what mechanical consequences are available, and in what ficonal

circumstances can you use them?
! Require someone to make a Move. Most player Moves are triggered by
player acons, but somemes they can be triggered by something you did as
GM. Weather Serious Harm is a good example, as it’s nearly always the

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 Thematic moves

direct result of you deciding to inflict a powerful aack. Shake Off is oen

made as a direct consequence of a GM Move, too.
! Make someone Mark Pressure. To do this, they must take mental, emoonal
or physical harm, or come under, uh, pressure. Say what’s pushing them closer
to breaking point, and make them Mark Pressure.
! Start a Doom Clock. Do this when you want to create me pressure by
having a specific thing happen aer a limited me period.

GM moves
! Shi someone’s Relaonship up or down. If it goes down, you should
consider making them Mark Pressure as well.
! Mark Arion. Do this when the fleet’s vulnerabilies have been exposed
publicly, or something else has happened to terrify the people of the fleet;
or when some substanal damage has been done to the fleet’s capability or
resources. Ships blown up? Mark Arion. Chief engineer died? Mark
Arion. Plague puts half the pilots in sick bay? Mark Arion.
! Create a Shortage. Do this only when there is major damage to a specific
resource such as fuel, ammunion, food, or water. Start a Doom Clock to go
with it.
! Change Momentum. Do this only when there is a major shi in the fleet’s
fortunes. A victory or loss that substanally changes the strategic posion.
The destrucon – or capture – of a truly vital asset. A game-changing
moment.
! Give someone +/–1 Forward, or +/–1 Ongoing. Do this when the situaon
makes things substanally harder or easier than usual, not just for a
marginal advantage or disadvantage. Only do it when there’s a concrete
advantage in play, not something ephemeral like “I’m trying extra hard” or
“I’ve planned in advance” or indeed anything you could do prey much
every me you roll. (See below for more details on this.)

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GM Moves

Bonuses and penales can be a bit complicated:

! You can give someone a modifier that applies to any roll they make or, if you
wish, you can limit the modifier to a parcular acon or context. For
example “you get +1 Ongoing to being stealthy, while you’re using the ghost
field”.
! Don’t forget the combined modifier to a dice roll can’t go higher than +4 or
lower than –3. As a guide, if it’s something that a player could theorecally
simply narrate doing every me they take the relevant acon in future, then
it shouldn’t provide a modifier.
! Roll penales are for general adverse condions that don’t create a long-
term impact on the character. You’re not injured, but you’re operang below
par because of some external condion. An Ongoing penalty is for when the
environment is hosle, like you’re fighng in zero-g, or you’re making an
argument in front of an angry crowd. A penalty Forward is for when there’s
no ongoing environmental challenge – perhaps you got concussed, or
someone caught you by surprise.
! Don’t inflict a roll penalty if there’s a concrete ficonal effect that can apply
instead. So, if there’s fire blocking your path so that you can’t escape from
the landing bay, there’s no need to inflict –1 Forward to escape the landing
bay. You just… can’t escape, or perhaps you have to Shake Off the fire. But if
the landing bay is filled with smoke, you might inflict –1 Ongoing.
As a rule of thumb, don’t inflict mulple mechanical effects for the same
ficonal cause. Choose the most appropriate one and go with that. So if you’re
giving –1 Ongoing for smoke, don’t also make them Mark Pressure.

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 Thematic moves

Make a Threat Move

The next secon describes a range of threat types that you can bring in, from
facons to enemy ships. Each has its own list of Moves which you can use with
a threat of that type. When it’s me to make a GM Move, you can always make
an appropriate Threat Move if you wish, provided you have a threat of the
relevant type to make it with. As with other Themac Moves, these are here to
help inspire you when you’re stumped, so if you prefer to do something that

GM moves
isn’t listed, that’s fine too as long as it fits with your Core Moves.

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GM Moves

Threats and Threat Moves

Listed below are various threat types. When you decide to use one, you obviously
need to define the specific individual or group that you’re using. For example, you
can’t just reveal secrets of the universe willy-nilly, you have to introduce a locaon
that could be hiding those secrets. Equally, you can work backwards: in this scene
I’ve got an NPC who is a senior military officer, so I take a look at the fleet
leadership Threat Moves.

People
The individuals living in the fleet. Soldiers, crew, civilians.

For each one, start with a name, appearance/noceable traits, and a role.
When you use them as more than simple window-dressing, you’ll also want to
get to grips with what drives them. Who or what do they care about? What do
they want? Let that drive their behaviour in play.

Whiplash is a fighter pilot. He’s a handsome dude with a ready smile. He

likes the acon-packed life of a pilot and he wants to enjoy the beer
things in life.

That’s why Whiplash nearly always volunteers for dangerous missions, but
it also explains why he’s running a small-scale black market operaon from
out of his footlocker.

Moves:
! Display their everyday life.
! Show what they’re doing to cope with the pressure.
! Reveal their hopes and dreams.
! Reveal their doubts and fears.

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 Threats and Threat Moves

! Show who or what they care about.

! Ask for help.
! Do something suspicious.
! Lose control and do something stupid.

The fleet leadership

High-ups in the military, senior policians.

GM moves
It might be that your players take all the high-up roles in the fleet, and that’s
fine. But if they don’t, you can fill those roles with NPCs.

The leaders of the fleet are just people, right? So you can think of them in that
way somemes, and use the Moves listed above for people. But for a lot of the
me they’re defined by their responsibilies and the power they wield. They’ve
got the whole fleet looking to them to sort out every problem. So a lot of what
they do will represent the reacon of “those in charge” to some problem.

There’s a few good ways to play with the fleet leadership:

! Have them make reasonably sensible, praccal decisions about very difficult
issues, and give them to a player character to implement. The decision is a
good one, but it’s a very difficult problem, and now it’s the players’ problem
to deal with it.
! Have them make foolish, impraccal decisions, and then make the fallout of
those decisions the problem. How long will the players put up with their crap?
! Have them take against someone. This one here is a dangerous idiot. Give
me one excuse, and they’re cooling off in the brig for the next few days.
! Have them decide they like someone. This one here is meant for big things.
They need to be given interesng problems to solve. Make it something
really hard.

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GM Moves

Fleet leadership has to be at least somewhat remote, to leave space for the
players to have their fun. They can’t be like Captain Kirk coming along on every
mission, or making every lile decision.

Moves:
! Give orders or non-negoable suggesons.
! Ask for advice.
! Take a strong stance on an issue.
! Take an interest in a person or problem.
! Crack down on bad behaviour.
! Inexplicably overlook a problem.
! Defend or extend their authority or control.

Facons
Groups of people in the fleet with shared ideals and/or goals. Polical, military,
religious, terrorist, criminal.

A facon is like a person, in a way. It has its own style and approach, and its
own drive and interests. Those interests tend to be bigger, and more polical in
nature, than an individual’s interests. An individual wants food: a facon wants
control of the food supply. An individual wants revenge on the officer who
ordered their loved one to their death: a facon wants to remove the corrupt
leadership and replace them with like-minded people. You get the idea.

Each facon is a specific kind of group. They’re not just some random mob,
they’re the Cult of the Goddess Athena, or an ultra-right-wing paramilitary
force, or the Cain crime family, or the worker’s rights party. The nature of the
group will define their style and approach, drives and interests, and the likely
resources at their disposal.

74
 Threats and Threat Moves

Of course, the facon is in reality just a bunch of individuals, so everything it

ever does is done through individual people. Somemes it’s ok to just treat
those people as arms of the facon, other mes you’ll want to bring out their
individual drives and needs. There should usually be one main character who is
idenfiable as the leader, or perhaps just the voice, of a facon, so the players
have someone to interact with.

Moves:

GM moves
! Share their view of the world.
! Look aer their own.
! Hoard power or resources.
! Make unreasonable demands.
! Offer a deal or alliance.
! Get in the way of something important.
! Escalate to violence.

Enemy fleet
One or more enemy ships.

The enemy fleet is out there, waing. It could appear at any minute. Wherever
it arrives, it’s a direct and deadly threat.

The appearance of the enemy fleet is also an opportunity to build on your inial
conversaon about who the enemy are. What technology do they possess?
What do their ships look like and what can they do? If there’s a boarding party,
we get to see what they look like in person. Seize the opportunity to make their
inhuman nature apparent, and scare the shit out of the players.

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GM Moves

Moves:
! Arrive out of nowhere.
! Close the distance to firing range.
! Launch a wave of smaller ships.
! Send a boarding party/landing party.
! Block the way.
! Destroy a vulnerable target.
! Jump away, leaving something behind.

Infiltrators
Traitors, shapeshiers, possession, spies.

You can’t trust anyone. Not really. Your best friend might seem like she’s got your
back. She’s smart, brave, and dedicated to protecng humanity. But is she really?

In Last Fleet, the enemy can make themselves seem human. Anyone might turn
out to be one of them. And some humans, inexplicably, decide to work with the
enemy too.

Don’t overdo this. If everyone’s an infiltrator then the game stops being fun.
Most infiltrators are anonymous NPCs, just another bad guy to find and kill. But
just occasionally, make it someone they care about.

Remember infiltrators are people, too. They’re not just a very convincing
facsimile of a human – they have thoughts and feelings, even if underneath it all
their driving purpose is to destroy humanity.

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 Threats and Threat moves

Moves:
! Inveigle themselves into important fleet operaons.
! Work to secure the trust of the players.
! Put on a convincing display of innocence.
! Conceal something on the fleet (bomb, transponder, etc).
! Steal, damage or destroy something important.

GM moves
! Make contact with sympathizers in the fleet.
! Make an assassinaon aempt.

Locaons
Planets, moons, asteroid fields, space staons, the inside of enemy ships.

The fleet moves around all the me, so you’ll be creang these on the fly, most
of the me. You haven’t got me to plan, so come up with a suitably vivid
generic SF locaon and use it. Use it to hide the enemy fleet, or seed it with
useful resources, perhaps hard to exploit. And somemes, just somemes, put
something stranger there – something which sheds light on the enemy, or even
deeper truths about the game universe.

Moves:
! Conceal enemies.
! Trap someone.
! Offer resources.
! Offer shelter.
! Reveal secrets of the universe.

77
78
Setting up your
game
Before you start playing the game, you need to have an idea of what happened
to leave your characters on the last ragtag fleet of human ships anywhere in the
galaxy, who their enemy is, what the fleet is like, and who your characters are.

For this, you have three opons:

Setup
! Set your game in one of the sengs provided in this book. You could go for
the aermath of the Corax aack on the Interplanetary Commonwealth,
using the details summarized below and described in full in pages 199–209,
with or without the quick-start scenarios provided on pages 211–231. Or you
could use the alternave Promethia Damned seng on pages 232–243. This
approach gives you pre-generated characters and relaonships, and will save
you me if you want to get started quickly.
! Create your game from scratch, collaboravely. The rest of this secon helps
you through that. It explains the game’s assumpons, which need to be true
for the game to play the way it’s intended to. And it divides setup into
manageable chunks, idenfying the quesons you need to answer before
you start.
! You can mix and match, grabbing bits from the sengs and scenarios on
pages 199–243 and adding your own ideas. The seng is specifically
designed so you can pick up a specific ship, facon, character, or enemy, and
drag and drop them into your own world.

We don’t want to dive into the seng in enormous detail at the start. The best
stories weave background detail into the narrave: they show, rather than tell.
Try to emulate that here, and agree just enough to enable you to start playing

79
Setting up your game

through scenes without tripping over a lack of shared understanding of the

game seng. Keep it brief.

Once you’ve created these things, you can and should use flashbacks to flesh
out more detail as needed. Short scenes of life before the war, what happened
when the war broke out, and how the fleet came together, with your characters
embedded in those scenes so we can see these events through their eyes and
understand their personal story beer. But again, we want to see what’s
happening right now, so make these brief and relevant to the present day story.
If you choose to do a flashback, it’s like you’re stepping back into game setup
for a moment, so don’t roll dice or make Moves, just say what you think might
have happened and discuss if needed.

The Commonwealth and the Corax

Before the war, our civilizaon was a loose federaon of three planets, called
the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth was riven with rivalries and facons,
it wasn’t perfect, but it was home. That all changed the day the Corax aacked.
All that is le of the Commonwealth now is a fleet of ships, in an uneasy
détente between a civilian fleet led by the warship Hecate, and the much larger
baleship Agamemnon.

The Corax is an intelligent extradimensional fungus network. This vast enty

lurks in the tenebrium – the medium through which FTL ships travel – making
incursions into the physical universe through dimensional ris. The Corax is
capable of absorbing the genec and informaonal content that make up a
living being into its network. Those who are paralysed and dragged off in bale
against the Corax will soon return: indisnguishable from who they once were,
but dedicated to an alien cause.

80
 The war – before and after

The war – before and after

Start by agreeing the seng for the game. You can agree this during the first
session, through open discussion, focusing on ideas that seem to enthuse the
group and avoiding ideas that turn anyone off. Or if the GM is inving the
players to take part in a game that they already have a strong vision for, the GM
can describe what they want the seng to be like and (hopefully) the players
will opt in if they like what they hear. Or mix and match – perhaps the GM
describes the enemy and the players describe the fleet, for example. The key

Setup
thing here is to give everyone the opportunity to see what’s going into the
game and steer away from anything that they find a major turn-off, because
once you start play it will be harder to take stuff out that you don’t like.

There are some things that will definitely be true whatever seng you agree.
Changing any of these would mark a major departure from the core premise of
the game, and might mean some of the game’s rules won’t work without
modificaon. These include:
! Human civilizaon has been destroyed. It no longer exists, full stop. The
most you’re going to find now is isolated hold-out groups, and those will be
very few and far between.
! It was destroyed by an inhuman enemy that is bent on finishing the job.
There might be dissent within the enemy’s ranks, but as a whole they want
the last of humanity wiped out.
! The players, and most if not all of the human race, are on a fleet of ships
fleeing through space. This fleet can jump from one point in space to
another using some form of FTL transport. It contains at least one massive
warship, the capital ship, as well as a much larger number of smaller fighters.
It might contain medium-sized civilian ships as well.

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Setting up your game

! There is a significant military element to the fleet, from which many (if not
necessarily all) of the player characters will be drawn.
! There are infiltrators on the human fleet. They appear human. They may
actually be human sympathizers, traitors, or mind controlled. They may not
be human at all.

With the above assumpons in mind, you should go into the game agreeing on:
! What human civilizaon was like before the war. Was there one home
planet? A small number of colonies? A vast galacc empire?
! What the enemy are like. Are they aliens? Robots? Demons? Do we even
know, at the start of the game, what their true nature is? What’s the overall
aesthec, when describing them and their ships?
! How the enemy hide among the fleet. Are they shapeshiers? Is it a
psychically projected illusion? Do they look just like us in their natural form?
Do they use mind control or possession?

Feel free to flesh out other details you get interested in during your discussion.
Details like how the enemy were first encountered are oen interesng to
discuss. But don’t forget to keep it brief – the game is about playing through the
aermath of a war the humans have already lost, not building an epic seng.

The Fleet
Once you’ve got basics of the war sorted out, it’s me to create the fleet:
! What’s the fleet like – is there just one big ship, or are there a number of
ships travelling together? What’s the name of the capital ship? What are the
fighters called?
! Who runs the fleet – is it exclusively a military operaon, or is there a
civilian authority as well? If the laer, what’s the nature of the civilian
authority? Is it elected, a monarchy, a council of elders, something else?

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 Tech levels

! What facons are there on the fleet – create at least three groups whose
agenda is different from that of the fleet leadership. They could be a union,
polical party, gang, criminal organizaon, religious group, scienfic society,
paramilitary organizaon, or something else. Sketch out their nature and
agenda.

Bear in mind that an opon for your characters will be to become involved with
one or more of these facons. If you make them all villainous, that won’t be an
aracve opon; so if you fancy some shades-of-grey polical intrigue then try

Setup
to pitch at least some of your facons as having sympathec goals.

If you want a game that focuses in on the military side of the fleet, with
dramac tension around the hierarchy, check out Rank and Duty, on pages
172–185, for ps on how to bring this in during set up and beyond.

Tech Levels
The default technology level for Last Fleet is prey similar to that of the early
21st century, but with extras such as FTL travel, arficial gravity, and advanced
spacecra. However, technological detail isn’t terribly important to the game.
You are free to vary the tech level however you’d like, so long as you don’t
undermine the fundamental themes of the game.

This is parcularly risky with advanced technology. Fully funconing replicators,

for instance, would take away from the idea of resource scarcity. Star Trek-style
scanners could make some aspects of fleet infiltraon impossible. In the
opposite direcon, the absence of FTL would make it challenging for the fleet to
get away from their pursuers.

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Setting up your game

Your characters
Each player must choose a Playbook to create their character from. I recommend
reading out the italicized text at the start of each Playbook – it’s fun to share this job
around, taking turns, if your group are comfortable with that. Players may then
want to look at the one(s) that grabbed them, before making a decision. Each player
has to choose a Playbook, and each Playbook can only be chosen by one player.

If two people want the same Playbook, talk about what aracted you to the
Playbook, and see if there’s another which might deliver a similar experience.
The GM will likely be able to help with that.

Once you’ve chosen your Playbooks, go through the following steps, not
necessarily in order:
! Choose a name and appearance for your character. Pilots will also need a
call sign. Some people like to do this first, some tend to do it last. Either is
fine. There’s a name list available at hps://blackarmada.com/last-fleet-
downloads/ if you’re struggling for inspiraon.
! Choose your stats. Set one at +1, one at –1 and the rest at +0.
! Choose three Role or Playbook Moves. At least one of these must be a Role
Move (see pages 113–116), and some Playbooks have one Playbook Move
pre-chosen for you as well.
! Agree ranks as appropriate. This means seng the relave ranks of the
military characters, and any important civilian tles held by characters. See
page 175 for some possible ranks. This isn’t a decision you can make enrely in
isolaon: you might choose to be a Captain to have some seniority, only to
discover that everyone else has chosen to be a Major. So talk about it together.

Once you’ve done those three steps, you’re ready to introduce your characters.
Let everybody have your name, rank, and describe your appearance and
whatever they’d know about your personality and background. Keep it brief!
We’ll find out more in play.

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 Your characters

Aer characters have been introduced, ask your Relaonship quesons. These
are listed in your Playbook. They are quesons like “who hates my guts” and
“who saved my life once”. You should ask at least two. Once you’ve got the
answer, flesh it out a lile: ask why, how that came about, and so on. Enough to
get a feel for the nature of the relaonship.

When you ask your quesons, you can either:

! Offer it to the other players to answer as their characters.
! Create an NPC (or use one someone has already created) and have them be
the answer.

Setup
You want most of the answers to come from Player Characters – definitely at
least half – but having a few NPCs with interesng relaonships to the Player
Characters (ideally more than one Player Character per NPC) at the start of the
game is a good thing.

Once you’ve answered your Relaonship quesons, everyone who has either
answered one of your quesons or had their answered by you gets a level one
Relaonship with you. Mulple quesons doesn’t mean a higher-level Relaonship.

Finally, set up your Pressure track, and the fleet tracks:

! If you plan to start the game with a challenging, acon-oriented scene (like a
space bale), everyone Marks one Pressure to start with, so that they’re
able to use Pressure effecvely to tackle the situaon they’re faced with.
! If you plan to start the game in a quiet period (including, as suggested in the
“first session” below, in the immediate aermath of a crisis), everyone Marks
three Pressure to start with, so there’s plenty of opportunity to Erase Pressure
through social and emoonal scenes.
! Set Momentum to –1.
! Mark two Arion.

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Setting up your game

The first session

Once you’ve set up the game, created the seng, generated the characters and
set up their relaonships, you’re ready to run your first session. This secon
gives you some advice on how to do that.

The first session will establish the tone for your game as a whole. It’s important
to give the characters room to get to know each other and find their feet, and
an acon-oriented start gets in the way of that. But we also want to establish
the threats and problems of the war. So, instead, give them the chance to
explore their characters in a less tense context. They’ve just jumped away from
some sort of dangerous situaon, and they’re at a place of safety, for the
moment at least. Emphasize that it will take the enemy some me to track
them down.

I recommend that you use quesons to establish what harrowing situaon

they’ve just come through. This enables you to quickly set up the aermath of
that situaon, where they’ll have lots of stuff to react to, but also space to
interact with each other.

Here are the quesons I suggest:

! You’ve just escaped from a crisis. What threat were you facing? (Prompts:
was it an aack by the enemy fleet? Sabotage? An assassinaon aempt?)
! What went terribly wrong during the crisis that made it even worse?
! Whose quick-thinking acons got you out of it?
! Who was hurt during the crisis?
! What was the cost you paid to resolve the crisis?

You needn’t necessarily ask all of these quesons. Definitely you need to ask
the first, and each of the rest add layers of interest and ghten the screws. If

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 The first session

you can, ask a queson to each player at the table, so they all feel invested in
what you’ve created.

Once you’ve got the crisis and its resoluon properly established, give them
some me and space to play through the aermath. You may find that they
immediately have things they want to do prompted by the situaon. But if not,
ask them what they’re doing, their roune, who they work with. Study the
answers to their relaonship quesons, too, and consider asking them
quesons about those.

Setup
You should also use this opportunity to introduce NPCs and start making them
care about them. Get started on that right away, especially if the players don’t
seem inially sure what to do. Ask quesons to establish who is connected to
those NPCs – whose subordinate are they, or whose advisor, or who are they
secretly sleeping with?

Ask quesons, too, about the ships, the key locaons on each of them, what
happens in each locaon and who tends to be found there. Follow your
curiosity, and try to get a feel for the place. You’ll be using that later on when
you’re wondering where to put a secretly smuggled package, or where to have
a clandesne conversaon, or which bit of the ship to blow up next.

You might find your players get itchy feet. Some people get bored just doing
conversaon all the me. If so, you can introduce low-key problems to keep
them engaged. Maybe there’s a black-market ring to invesgate, or a problem
with one of the ships, or someone’s acng suspiciously. Just don’t blow
anything up yet, ok?

Once the players have started to get a feel for who their characters are, you can
introduce some bigger threat or danger. A good way to do this is to call for the
Momentum Move. Depending on how long your sessions are and how quickly

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Setting up your game

your players get through the quieter scenes, that might happen at the end of
the first session (which makes a wonderful cli anger) or partway through the
second, but definitely don’t leave it longer than that. Remember, once you’ve
introduced a fresh crisis, you’ll want to keep coming back to those quieter
periods too. That’s the rhythm of the game: crisis, recovery.

You can take the exact same approach during a one-shot, using one of the
scenarios on page 211–231. Each of them comes with a pre-loaded tense
situaon, but it’s sll a good idea to set up something that just happened, using
the quesons above.

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 Basic moves

Player Moves
Basic Moves

Engage In Bale
When you Engage In Bale, roll +Raw. On a Hit, choose:
! You overcome a tough target’s defences, or destroy a number of weaker
targets.
! You hold off a determined assault or drive away a formidable opponent.

Player moves
! You keep a target safe during the bale.

On a 7–9, choose two:

! You take fire in the process and must Weather Serious Harm.
! Someone or something else gets damaged or destroyed, the GM says who
or what.
! Your acons leave you or someone else exposed, the GM will say who takes
advantage.

Engage In Bale is strictly for potenally deadly fights between enemies, not
scuffles or boxing matches or anything of that sort. You must have a weapon
capable of doing significant harm to the enemy, and defences capable of
withstanding their aack, otherwise you can’t make the Move. Similarly, your
opponent must have a weapon capable of doing significant harm to you, or
defences capable of weathering the aack; or else there’s no need to make the
Move, you succeed automacally.

The effect of overcoming a target’s defences depends on the situaon. Aack

an enemy mothership with your fighter and you might be able to damage a key
system, but you won’t destroy it. Aack it with ordnance and the damage will

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be more severe. Equally, overcoming the target’s defences might mean geng
past the defences rather than destroying the target.

Holding an enemy off or driving them away does not mean they are
permanently neutralized. But it does mean you’ve kept them at bay as long as
you needed to. Similarly, keeping a target safe doesn’t mean they’re
permanently delivered from harm, just that they are safe from the immediate
threat(s).

Examples:
! You’re trying to capture an enemy bunker. You roll to Engage In Bale, and
get a 7–9. You choose to Weather Serious Harm and your acons leave you
exposed, and the GM tells you you’ve got past the bunker’s defenders but
they’ve set up a booby trap which is about to explode!
! You’re trying to protect an exposed civilian ship from enemy fighters. You roll
to Engage In Bale. You get a 10+ and so you keep the civilian ship safe long
enough for it to rejoin the safety of the fleet.
! Alone in your fighter, you’re trying to prevent an enemy heavy raider from
boarding your ship. It’s protected by a wing of fighters. You roll to Engage In
Bale. You roll a 7–9, breaking through the defending fighters and blowing
the heavy raider out of the sky, but the fighters wheel around to aack you
from all sides. You must Weather Serious Harm, and you’re le exposed,
unable to bring your weapons to bear. You’ll have to Shake Them Off if you
want to get home safe.

Note that the Marine and Pilot roles are beer at these two Moves
(see page 116).

See the secon on Space Bales, on page 191–198, for how to handle the
interplay between individual combatants and the larger bale.

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 Basic moves

Shake Off
When you Shake Off a threat, roll +Hard. On a Hit, you’ve shaken it off, but on a
7–9, the GM chooses:
! It’s out of the frying pan, into the fire.
! You don’t escape unscathed.
! You lose or use up something in the process.
! The threat intensifies, escalates, or targets someone else.

On a 10+ you’re in full control, take +1 forward.

Player moves
Shake Off is used when some external threat is pung you at risk, but you have
a chance to avoid, resist, or reduce it, even if only by luck. Not all threats can be
avoided! But oen they can, and in that case you use this Move. It’s good for
evading enemy fire, fleeing from pursuers, hiding from a search party, geng
past a security system, and many more.

Don’t roll to Shake Off if you’ve already taken the brunt of something harmful;
in that case roll to Weather Serious Harm.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire means that you’re (at least for now) safe from
that threat, but there’s something else pung you at risk. Maybe you had to
flee into a dangerous asteroid field, or maybe you were so busy dealing with the
threat that something else has become a problem.

You don’t escape unscathed means you’ve managed to shake it off, but not
before it did something bad to you. Or perhaps you just held firm against it,
suffering some consequences. The GM will say what, and what the mechanical
effect is (if any). It might well include Weathering Serious Harm. If you were
trying to shake off the aenons of an enemy patrol, perhaps they spoed you,
but you then managed to get out of their sight – so they’re looking for you, but

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Player Moves

haven’t found you right now. If you were trying to Shake Off an aacker,
perhaps you took a hit before you escaped.

You lose or use up something in the process means you’ve had to burn through
your fuel to get free, or you had to abandon your only weapon, or similar.

The threat intensifying or escalang means that although you’ve avoided the
threat for the moment, it’s very much sll around, even more dangerous than
before, and will probably return to threaten you or others. For instance, you get
free of the fire that has broken out in engineering, but it spreads into the main
engine room.

Note that Shake Off is never used if another more specific move applies. For
example, if you’re keeping an armed foe at bay by shoong at them, you’re
Engaging In Bale, not Shaking It Off.

Weather Serious Harm

When you Weather Serious Harm, roll +Hard. On a 10+, you withstand it but
must Mark Pressure. On a 7–9 it hits you hard, the GM chooses two (may pick
the same one twice):
! You must Mark Pressure.
! You are injured or (for pilots only) your fighter takes damage to a specific
system – the GM says how it’s slowing you down, geng in the way, or
pung you in a spot.
! You lose something important (an item, your secure well-defended posion,
etc).
On a 6 or less you feel the full force of it: you are out of control, lost, trapped or
helpless, and the GM may start a Doom Clock.

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Weather Serious Harm is for when you have been unable to avoid an aack or
other threat. We’re not rolling to see if you can resist it or avoid it – that would be
Shake Off – we’re just trying to see how bad the effect is.

It has to be a seriously harmful blow. Aer all, if you roll badly you are
potenally going to be helpless or at risk of death. So for example if someone
punches you in the face it might be serious, but more likely it isn’t. In that case
the GM will most likely just tell you to Mark Pressure or some other lesser
effect.

Player moves
Injuries and damage to specific ship systems should be something serious
and/or debilitang that makes life hard in the current scene. Don’t choose
something that won’t maer unl later. For instance, a broken leg could be
appropriate for a character who is trying to fight their way to the flight deck
past enemy boarding pares, because having a broken leg would make that a
lot harder. But if they were already in their fighter, a broken leg would be no
more than a minor annoyance, so you wouldn’t bother nong such an injury –
choose something else, or just hit them with some Pressure.

There’s a list of ideas for damage to ship’s systems on pages 189–190.

The Doom Clock represents how the consequences of the blow will spin further
out of your control. You might be trapped in your damaged fighter with limited
me before your air supply runs out. Or you might be unconscious behind
enemy lines, with limited me before the enemy finds you. The GM chooses the
danger and how fast the clock is cking.

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Player Moves

Seek Out
When you Seek Out something well hidden, say what you’re looking for or just
that you’re sure there’s something to find here, and roll +Sharp. On a Hit, you
find it. On a 7–9, the GM chooses one:
! You aract unwanted aenon.
! You discover something unexpected and horrifying (implicate a friend,
discover a terrible truth, expose your own weakness, etc).
! You’ve found it, but something stands between you and it.
! Your invesgaon takes a long me (allowing your enemies to advance their
plans, or using up resources).

Note, before you roll you have to say what you’re looking for and how you’re
going to find it. You have to choose something that would have a decent chance
of working! You can’t just say “I’m searching for any traitors in the fleet”
without having a clear means for finding them.

Somemes Scale can come into this. It’s not possible for one person to search
the enre fleet for a bomb; depending on your method you might need a large
number of people helping you to stand a chance of success. Pulling Strings is a
good way to overcome problems of Scale.

Another way around this is to break the problem down, and idenfy something
you can find more easily, as a stepping stone to the thing you’re really aer. For
instance, if you’re looking for a bomb, but there’s just too many places it could
be, you could search for sources of bomb-making materials, via your black
market contacts. Then you could go and grill the right people on who has been
buying their stuff. That’s something one person can do fairly easily, and it might

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 Basic moves

lead to informaon that will make it easier to track down the bomber, and then
find the bomb.

Discovering something unexpected or horrifying invites the GM to introduce

some new fact that they maybe didn’t have in mind before. The bomber turns
out to be someone you care about, for example. GM: It’s ok to reveal
something horrifying that you’d been sort of planning anyway, but it’s also great
to introduce something new right at that moment, specifically chosen to horrify
the invesgator.

Player moves
Something standing between you and it could mean it’s in a hard-to-reach
locaon, it’s protected by someone or something, or similar. Informaon could
be encrypted or locked in the brain of someone who isn’t ready to spill their
secrets. Whatever the case, you have more to do before you get what you
wanted.

You should only choose the final opon – that the invesgaon takes a long
me – if me actually maers. Don’t worry, it’s usually possible to find a way to
make sure that it does maer.

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Player Moves

What about interrogaon?

Interrogaon does not enable you to force an NPC to tell you the truth, even
when under duress. Yes, you can queson NPCs and potenally get informaon
that way – but that’s either because they choose to reveal it, or because you
scrunize their behaviour and words and deduce something they didn’t mean
to reveal.

The Aquarius Playbook has a Move which does allow you to ask direct quesons
and get answers during an interrogaon, but for everyone else the best you can
do is to Call Them On Their Shit, demanding that they prove themselves by
answering your quesons. That will only work if you have some kind of
emoonal or social leverage, and even then they can opt to take the
consequences rather than give you the truth.

The point is, as noted above, you need a way to get informaon before you can
Seek Out, and interrogang someone doesn’t necessarily count. If you queson
a fanacal enemy agent, there’s basically no way that’s going to yield detailed
informaon about their plans; so you can’t use an interrogaon as the trigger to
Seek Out those plans, unless as part of a broader invesgaon.

Interrogaon scenes can, as a result, be a bit dull, and I don’t recommend you
spend overlong on them. It can be fun to play through the highlights of such a
scene, but a prolonged queson and answer session is usually more frustrang
than revealing.

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 Basic moves

Pull Strings
When you Pull Strings on the fleet, say who you’re going to for help and what
you want them to do, and roll +Smooth. On a Hit choose one:
! Gain help with a specific task from an NPC or group and Hold one towards
choosing an opon from the Support or Interfere Move list, or taking an
Acon At Scale.
! You gain temporary access to rare or restricted equipment, resources, skills,
or informaon.
! Change people’s behaviour on the fleet at large (curfew, raoning, calm
riong, etc).

Player moves
On a 7–9, the GM chooses two:
! You can’t do it without help from someone you you’d rather not get involved
with.
! Someone demands a favour in return, or else they won’t help.
! You aract unwanted aenon.
! There’s an unexpected cost or consequence.

Pulling Strings is used for any situaon where you’re using social or polical
leverage to get something done on the fleet. You might be reaching out through
a contact network to get hold of something you need. You might be asking a
facon to help you with something. You might be pung in place fleet-level
measures like raoning, a quaranne, or a curfew.

This can include geng help from the military, including by giving orders
through the military chain of command. This is because we assume that
everyone is busy doing their regular dues. For example, if you wanted to get
the marines to search the fleet for smuggled goods (act at scale), you’d have to
Pull Strings even if you’re the captain of the marines. If you want any

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Player Moves

mechanical benefit from help from military subordinates (Support opons) you
must roll to Pull Strings, even though they answer to you. On a 6 or less, the
GM should normally assume your orders sll get followed – remember, Failure
Is Not An Opon! – but have something go wrong or some other problem arise.
With that said, in extreme circumstances it is possible for a muny to happen –
just make sure it’s supported by the ficon.

Note that choosing to gain Hold means you can get the benefits of the Support
Move without having to roll it in the middle of a dangerous situaon. You sll
have to be in a posion where the relevant NPC or facon can help you, and say
what they’re doing to help. They have to be actually available to help in the
scene, you can’t just say “and then so-and-so appears out of nowhere and leaps
to my aid!” If an NPC is helping you in scene already and you have a
Relaonship with them, e.g. if they’re part of your military unit and backing you
up in combat, you can roll the Support Move instead, without having Pulled
Strings ahead of me.

Noce that “rare or restricted equipment, resources, skills, or informaon” is a

relave term. It excludes anything that you personally have roune access to. For
example, if you are a fighter pilot, a fighter ship is neither rare nor restricted. To
anyone else, it probably is. Conversely, a fighter pilot would have to Pull Strings to
get access to engineering equipment. It is important to note that, while it might
seem as though a senior officer or polician could easily pull rank to get any
equipment or skills from anywhere on the fleet, most of these are not rounely
accessible to them, so they sll have to Pull Strings to get them.

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 Basic moves

Acng at Scale means you take on a task that’s bigger than you alone could
normally aempt. Once you’ve Pulled Strings and opted to Act at Scale, you
undertake the task, rolling any relevant Moves as normal to see how successful
you are, but the scale of any resulng effect can be larger and perhaps more
significant than if you were acng alone. A good example is if you wanted to
Seek Out something across the whole fleet. That’s something you couldn’t
realiscally do as an individual; but with help from a larger group, you can. Roll
to Pull Strings, and then if you’ve been able to Act at Scale, roll to Seek Out to
determine whether and how you find what you were looking for.

Changing people’s behaviour on the fleet at large is how you typically solve

Player moves
social problems resulng from build-up of Arion. You could use it to deal with
civil unrest (e.g. by making concessions to whatever is causing discontent). You
could use it to deal with Shortages (e.g. through raoning). Or you can also use
it to deal with issues such as disease (e.g. through imposing a quaranne). Any
me that you want to get a result at large scale that can’t be achieved through
any other move, consider whether this opon might help. You can also use this
opon when taking acons to generally boost morale, and thereby reduce
Arion, if you wish.

If you need help from someone you’d rather not get involved with, that means
that whoever you went to for help isn’t able to do it on their own. Perhaps they
hook you up with help from someone else, or perhaps you end up having to
approach someone else directly. Either way, the GM will choose a person or
facon that is disreputable, inconvenient, or otherwise problemac for you.

If someone demands a favour, it could be the original person you asked, or it

might be someone else who is involved (including “someone you’d rather not get
involved with” if the GM chose that opon). They may not ask you to do
anything immediately, but they won’t help you unless you agree to their

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Player Moves

demands. GM: if they’re asking for something in future, make sure to make a
note of it, so you can bring it up later – and if the character refuses to honour
the deal, they’ll have to do something to handle the aggrieved NPC, or they’ll
make them wish they had.

Unexpected costs or consequences are in addion to anything you’d normally

expect – so if you impose food raoning then you’d expect there to be a certain
amount of black-market trading going on, those aren’t unexpected. But you
wouldn’t expect a specific NPC to get sick from lack of food, and their wife to start
stealing medical supplies, for example.

What, no queson Moves?

If you’re a PBTA veteran, you’ll be familiar with the sort of Moves that let players
ask the GM quesons about the world, about the situaon, about NPCs and what
they’re thinking and feeling. Some of the Playbooks in Last Fleet have them, but
there’s no basic Move for doing this like there are in a lot of other games.

That doesn’t mean there’s no way for you to get informaon! In fact one of the
GM’s Principles is to make the ficon and mechanics transparent, so if you’re not
sure about something, ask – you don’t need to make a Move to get answers.

What it does mean is that most characters don’t have a way to determine if there’s
an ambush waing for them, or if someone’s lying. Last Fleet is full of concealed
moves and suchlike, and for most players, you’ll just have to deal with not
knowing for sure what someone’s up to. Seek Out is your main tool for geng to
the boom of mysteries, if you’re so inclined.

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 Basic moves

Cover Up
When you Cover Up something serious, roll +Smooth. On a 10+ they buy your
decepon, as long as no clear countervailing evidence appears. On a 7–9, the
GM chooses:
! They’re only fooled temporarily.
! You must give a concrete assurance, provide some extra corroboraon, or do
something extra to throw them off.
! Someone realizes you’re up to something, and it won’t be the last you hear
of this.

Player moves
Cover Up can be used for situaons where you’re trying to conceal something
you’re doing right there and then, or to deflect noce from wider events. Either
way, you have to say what you’re doing that could conceal, deceive, distract, or
confuse the target.

It can be used on an individual or a group, if you’re in a posion to fool them

directly yourself. If you need to Cover Up more indirectly, through rumour or
propaganda or similar, you will need to Pull Strings to Act at Scale before you
can make the Cover Up Move. This is parcularly the case if you’re trying to
conceal something from the whole fleet.

Cover Up is only used for serious situaons where the repercussions of

discovery really maer. Don’t use it for hiding your concealed bole of
moonshine – unless possession of alcohol is a really serious offence in your
game. But feel free to use it to conceal your black-market moonshine operaon.

Cover Up is not generally used for simple stealth. Avoiding someone’s noce
enrely is typically handled with Shake Off. But if the target is aware of you and
you’re trying to conceal the fact you’re carrying an illegal firearm, by all means
roll to Cover Up.

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Player Moves

If they’re only fooled temporarily, it means that you’ve got a limited period of
me before they realize what’s up and (most likely) come aer you or raise the
alarm or similar.

Requiring something addional can vary a lot depending on what it is you’re trying
to do. If you’re trying to get into a command centre on a fake ID, perhaps the
security guard asks you to surrender your firearm, so now you’re going in
unarmed. If you’re trying to convince the whole fleet that everything is under
control when it really isn’t, then maybe you’ll have to make up a really big lie to
distract them from the truth. Work with the GM to figure out what will convince or
distract the target most effecvely.

If someone realizes you’re up to something, that might mean they’re going to

invesgate you later; it could mean they’ll try to blackmail you; they might
come aer you demanding answers; or it could mean you’ve simply lost the
trust of someone whose opinion maers for you. The GM decides how much
the NPC has deduced, and what they’re going to do about it.

Cover Up vs Seek Out

Cover Up and Seek Out might seem to be in direct opposion to each other.
And indeed, it can be that they are – if it happens that one character is trying to
Seek Out the exact thing that the other is trying to Cover Up. This is rare,
however, for a number of reasons.

First, in order to Seek Out something, you have to believe there’s something to
look for. A successful Cover Up would persuade you otherwise. Similarly, to
Cover Up something, you must believe that someone might be trying to find it
out. A successful Seek Out could mean that someone finds you before you have
the chance to distract them with lies. So in a lot of cases, one person gets the
drop on the other and there is no conflict.

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 Basic moves

It’s more common that the two are adjacent rather than directly in conflict.
Someone might try to Seek Out a murder weapon while the other tries to Cover
Up that they are the murderer, for instance. So before assuming that the Moves
are directly opposed, consider whether they might be aimed at subtly different
things, such that both can succeed.

Remember, too, that Cover Up is about persuading another character of a truth,

while Seek Out is (typically) about finding something. It’s perfectly possible to
use Seek Out to catch someone red-handed only to be persuaded that they are
innocent. You have all the facts, but you disbelieve the logical conclusion that
you should draw from them.

Player moves
Despite the above, you might find yourself in the rare situaon where one
person’s successful Seek Out would defeat another person’s successful Cover
Up, and vice versa. If so, the first person should roll to Interfere with the second
person’s Cover Up roll. The results of the Cover Up roll – modified as necessary
– then resolve the conflict. This means that a good Cover Up roll is generally
able to win out, and sneaky PCs are able to conceal things if they really want to.

Reach Out*
When you Reach Out to someone who maers to you, choose one or more:
! Share a significant doubt or fear with them.
! Share a significant hope or dream with them.
! Share a significant failure or regret with them.
! Share your feelings about them.

For PCs, ask them if they respond posively, and roll +Warm if they do. For
NPCs, roll first: on a Hit, they respond posively. On a 10+, you each Erase one
Pressure; on 7–9, choose one of you who Erases one Pressure. Either way,
increase your Relaonship with each other by one.

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Player Moves

Reaching Out means opening up to them in some way, sharing what you’re
thinking and feeling. It implies a fairly friendly interacon: yelling your feelings
at them during an argument wouldn’t trigger the Move. It also implies novelty –
you can’t just keep sharing the same doubt or fear over and over again to crank
out an unlimited supply of Pressure reducons.

To get the benefit, they need to respond posively, which means neither
rejecng nor ignoring what you’re telling them. They needn’t respond in kind:
as long as it’s clear that they’re listening and treang what you’ve shared as
important.

You can use Reach Out with more than one person at once. If so, you get to
trigger the Move as long as one of them responds posively. Roll once, but only
those who responded posively get to Erase Pressure or increase Relaonships.

Let Loose*
When you Let Loose and indulge your base needs, roll +Raw. On a Hit, everyone
involved Erases one Pressure. On a 10+, you choose one opon from the list
below and decide the details; on a 7–9 you sll choose, but the GM decides the
details, and they’ll make it something you’ll immediately regret.
! You end up in the arms of someone you shouldn’t.
! You share a secret you shouldn’t.
! You make a promise you shouldn’t.
! You anger or alienate someone that maers to you (you may reduce an
appropriate Relaonship).

Say what happens, and who else is involved.

On a Miss, the same as a 7–9 but nobody erases any Pressure.

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Leng Loose means you’re doing indulging some sort of vice in a fairly
uncontrolled way. It could mean drinking, taking drugs, gambling, sex, sports,
fighng, bragging, or gossiping. It needn’t be something you’re heavily into: e.g.
you don’t have to be an alcoholic to go out and get snking drunk. It does have
to be something you’d find relaxing and/or catharc. This is not a case of having
a couple of drinks or a light-hearted ball game: it means you’re throwing
yourself into the acvity, and potenally losing control.

When a group of two or more PCs Let Loose together, one person should roll,
with the others Supporng if they wish. The person rolling to Let Loose chooses
who Erases Pressure, but anyone can benefit. In such a case, while it’s possible

Player moves
for the opons listed to affect a player character other than the person who
rolled the Move, that should only happen if they agree, or if they rolled a 7–9
on Support. Either way they should be involved in the decision as to which
opon to choose.

Note that the opons listed are prey wide open in terms of how you interpret
them. “Ending up in someone’s arms” could vary from a friendly embrace to an
intense romanc scene to wild sex. “Sharing a secret” could mean something
personal or state secrets. “Someone that maers to you” could mean a friend
or lover, or it could mean a superior officer. In any case it has to be something
you’re going to regret. Choose something that’s fun and interesng to play out.

The consequences of a 7–9 result could include increasing the level of or

gaining a Relaonship with another character who is involved, where
appropriate. It depends on whether you end up closer to them, or caring more
about them (or vice versa). It’s not automac, though, because there’s plenty of
ways for these consequences to play out in a completely unemoonal way:
casual sex, sharing an operaonal secret rather than something personal,

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angering someone important as opposed to someone you care about, and so

on. In cases like that, there’d (probably) be no change to the Relaonship.

GM: note that on a 7–9 or Miss you get quite a lot of control over what the PC
does. Pay aenon to your Principles here: we want something that’s fun and
interesng for the player, not something that arbitrarily humiliates them. If in
doubt, consider checking in with the player before you make the decision. This
is especially true with the opon where they end up in someone’s arms. They’ve
put their trust in you by choosing that opon – don’t let them down.

Call Someone On Their Shit

When you Call Someone On Their Shit, tell them what their problem is and
what they’d need to do to convince you otherwise, and roll +Hard. On a Hit they
choose from the opons below; on a 10+ they are limited to the first two
opons, and if they choose the first they Mark XP.
! They act to prove you wrong by doing what you asked.
! They openly and forcefully refuse to do what you asked them to (and they
Mark Pressure).
! They openly and unequivocally admit you’re right.
! They act contrite and give you something they think you want.
! They respond by Calling You On Your Shit.

Calling Someone On Their Shit is a form of social and emoonal pressure. You tell
them what’s wrong with them and what they need to do differently, and the
beer your roll, the harder it is for them to refuse.

On a Strong Hit they must either act to prove you wrong (meaning they do
whatever you said they’d need to do to convince you otherwise) or ostentaously
refuse to do so and Mark Pressure. On a Weak Hit, you have opons to side-step
the pressure they’re pung on you in various ways.

106
 Basic moves

In addion to the potenal mechanical effects of refusing your demands, there

may be social consequences. For example, if you accuse someone of treachery
and they seem to respond by acng shiy, that is likely to confirm the
accusaon in some peoples’ eyes.

On a Hit NPCs generally do what you’ve asked them to do, unless it goes against
their interests to do so.

Examples include:
! Katerina demands Isaac explain why he’s been sneaking around so much.
“I’m beginning to have my doubts about you, Isaac – I don’t know if I can

Player moves
trust you anymore.” She Calls Isaac On His Shit and says that he has to tell
her what he’s really up to. Katerina rolls an 11. Isaac doesn’t want to tell her
that he’s been smuggling illegal drugs to a sick friend, but if he refuses he’ll
have to Mark Pressure – plus Katerina may assume he’s up to something far
worse. He confesses what he’s been up to and begs her to keep his secret.
! Anton wants Ursula to give him access to the high security lab on deck D, to
examine some secret files. She’s refusing – he isn’t authorized to be there.
“Come on Ursula – you know you can trust me. Aer everything I’ve done
for you I can’t believe you’re refusing me this one lile favour.” He Calls Her
On Her Shit and rolls a 7. She doesn’t want to give him access to the lab, so
she apologizes and offers to check the files for him instead (act contrite and
do something she thinks he wants her to do). Anton doesn’t really want her
to see those files, but he doesn’t have much choice, so he takes her offer.
! Ebony is charging out alone to rescue a stranded civilian ship from a massive
wave of enemy fighters. Ruth cries out to her over the radio “Don’t be an
idiot, Ebony! You can’t fight them all, you knucklehead!” She’s Calling Her
On Her Shit. She rolls a 5. The GM tells Ebony to Mark Pressure, and starts a
Doom Clock. If she doesn’t get the civilian ship to safety before it runs out,
the fighters will destroy it.

107
Player Moves

Support/Interfere*
When you Support or Interfere with another character’s Move, Mark Pressure
and roll +Warm (support) or +Sharp (interfere). On a 10+, Hold two. On a 7–9
Hold one, and be prepared to be entangled in any fallout from the Move. Spend
Hold to:
! Give +/–1 to the Move aer they roll.
! Create an opportunity or problem for them.
! Redirect a negave impact of the Move from the person making it onto
someone else.

When an NPC supports your Move, you roll +Relaonship on their behalf.

To Support or Interfere you must say how you’re helping or hindering the target
character. Encouragement or moral support isn’t enough to Support someone –
you must be providing useful informaon, resources, or acons that help theirs.
Equally, annoying or insulng someone probably isn’t enough to count for
Interference by itself: you need to be acvely geng in their way or diverng
their energies from what they’re trying to do.

NPCs can Support you, but only if you have a Relaonship with them. If so, you
roll +Relaonship instead of +Warm. You sll have to spend Pressure, and you
gain and spend the Hold on their behalf. The GM should be parcularly
aenve to consequences rebounding on the NPC – make sure they suffer
when things go wrong! note that NPCs, even NPCs you have no Relaonship
with, can also provide help if you have Pulled Strings ahead of me; in that
case, you can gain Hold which can be used in the same way as Hold for the
Support Move, but without the risk of something going awry there and then.
See pages 97–98 for more detail on this.

108
 Basic moves

Depending on the situaon, on a 7–9 you may be exposed to the risks of the
Move you’re trying to influence. If you roll a 10+ then you won’t be exposed to
any addional risk through Supporng/Interfering. That doesn’t mean you’re
immune to fallout – obviously if someone was trying to protect you from harm
by Engaging In Bale, and their roll to Engage In Bale fails, then you’ll take
the consequences of the failure even if you were Supporng them and rolled a
10+.

Don’t forget the combined modifier to any dice roll can’t go higher than +4 or
lower than –3.

Player moves
Wait Helplessly*
When you Wait Helplessly as others tackle a major problem, aer another
player rolls the dice you can say what you’re doing to cope and Mark two
Pressure to give them +1 to their roll.

Wait Helplessly can be viewed as a strictly meta-game effect; or you can think
of it as the gods intervening in response to a silent prayer, if you prefer. Either
way it helps other players to be engaged when they aren’t in the spotlight, since
it provides a mechanism for them to take part in the scene, even indirectly. It
also helps to spotlight the sense of fear and doubt of non-combatants during
bales, for example.

You must say what you’re doing to cope! No fair just spending two Pressure
without any roleplaying.

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Player Moves

Raise The Pressure*

When you Raise The Pressure on yourself*, pushing yourself beyond your
limits, Mark Pressure up to three times and add +1 per Pressure Marked to a
roll you just made.

You can only Raise The Pressure once per roll. The usual maximum of +4 added
to a roll applies.

You can’t Raise The Pressure with Cardinal Moves. These Moves are marked
with an asterisk (*) next to the name of the Move.

Momentum Move
When there’s a prolonged lull in the action, where the fleet is (for the moment
at least) safe and neither under attack nor dealing with a direct and immediate
threat, the GM rolls +Momentum. On a 10+ the GM offers the fleet an
opportunity to seize an advantage or hurt the enemy. On a 7–9 the GM
introduces a threat to the fleet, but with the opportunity to avoid or mitigate
the danger. On a 6 or less, a threat materializes without warning, and all that
can be done is damage limitation.

The purpose of the Momentum Move is to keep the game moving, and keep
the pressure on, through continuous introduction of opportunities and threats.
You should roll it at the start of the first session, but after that it only kicks in if
you’ve had a few scenes without the fleet being exposed to any real danger.

110
 Basic moves

It’s important to keep things from geng out of control. An existenal threat to
the fleet every session could lead to a never-ending adrenaline ride with no
me for the characters to interact with each other. That’s why you should have
a prolonged lull – with me for characters to Let Loose, Reach Out, and so on –
before making this Move. You can vary the length of these quiet periods:
somemes it might be just enough to catch their breath, but usually longer than
that – enough that they can go into the coming storm with good reserves of
unmarked Pressure slots.

When you make the Momentum Move, something interesng will always
happen – a threat or an opportunity. You should choose something that’s

Player moves
appropriate to managing the pace of the game, not necessarily always
something that puts the fleet in deadly danger or marking a potenal major
turning point in the war.

111
Player Moves

End Of Scene Move

At the end of a scene, check whether any of the tracks should change.
! Did someone suffer a significant blow (social, emoonal, or physical), do
something exhausng, get given a truly daunng task, or have to do
something horrible? They must Mark Pressure.
! Did they alienate someone they care about? Reduce their Relaonship (if
any) by one, and considering if they should Mark Pressure as well.
! Did the fleet, its people, or its resources take a significant blow?
Mark Arion.
! Was there a publicly visible event which was unseling, scary, or indicave
that the fleet is losing? Mark Arion.
! Did the fleet gain new resources or skilled people? Erase Arion.
! Was the scene a major turning point in the war? Change Momentum.

In theory, the above effects should be applied right away when the ficonal
trigger happens. But let’s be honest, somemes in the heat of the acon it’s
easy to forget to apply them as consistently as we should. So at the End Of The
Scene, it’s a good idea to look over the events of the scene to see if any of these
should have applied. Obviously, if you applied an effect during the scene itself,
you shouldn’t apply it a second me at the end of the scene.

112
 Role moves

Role Moves
Role Moves are only available to characters who have chosen them from their
starng allocaon of three Playbook Moves, or bought them as an Advance.

Not all Role Moves will be taken in your group, of course. In that case, it is
normally appropriate to handle relevant acons off-screen. If there is no PC
engineer, don’t focus on damaged ship systems, for instance. If you don’t have
any pilots, you may wish to downplay space bales, or focus on the acons of the
bigger ships. These roles are sll fulfilled, of course – by NPCs. But we aren’t all

Player moves
that interested in the detail of their acons.

Taccian
When your people go into bale, Hold one for each that is true:
! You have a good view of the balefield and direct comms with your people.

! Your people are trained and prepared for this sort of conflict.

! You knew the details of the bale in advance.

You can spend your Hold, one-for-one, to do one of the following:

! Support someone by ordering your forces to assist them or saying how you’d
drilled them for this eventuality.

! Order your forces to redeploy and erase one Segment on a bale Clock.

! Order a swi reacon to a problem and negate one Arion as it is inflicted.

The purpose of this Move is to enable Taccians to take part in bales, and to
generate appropriate strategies on the fly, as though they had planned them
out in advance. The Move is mostly used for barking orders like “aack paern

113
Player Moves

alpha!” or “B Wing, protect the Olympic Carrier!” and everyone swings into
acon, granng you the mechanical benefit described.

You get an addional opon if you had advance knowledge of where the enemy
would be, what numbers they have, the layout of the balefield and so on. In
that case, you can plan a detailed strategy, which enables you to retroacvely
declare that you had something planned all along, and have it be true. This is
true even aer the enemy has started moving around, since we assume that
you’d thought out various scenarios.

Taccians can also take command of the capital ship’s big guns and can
occasionally use them to provide Support in bale. See “Running space bales”
on pages 191–198 for more on this.

Engineer/scienst
When you work on an engineering job (research, repair, design, construct), roll
+Sharp. On a 10+ you complete it successfully – Erase one Arion or fix a
specific problem. On a 7–9, the same but the GM chooses: it’s a temporary fix,
it’s unstable, it’s not working as well as you hoped, you need _____ to complete
it, you’ll have to cannibalize ____, it’s going to take a while.

The GM can choose an extra opon from the 7–9 list (even if you rolled a 10+) if
any of the following are true: you don’t have enough me, you don’t have the
right tools or crew, the project is extremely ambious.

Working an engineering job can fix a specific problem like a damaged fighter or

malfunconing navigaon computer, or fix generalized damage and even wear-
and-tear by Erasing one Arion.

See the Damage secon (pages 186–191) for more about damage to ship’s
systems, including what happens if something is Unstable.

114
 Role moves

Something that just Erases one Arion should never be a temporary fix. You
don’t want to have to keep track of how much Arion is temporary, so just
don’t choose this opon!

Other characters who aempt anything more than simple repairs will probably
frak it up (a great opportunity for a GM Move) though they can potenally work
under an engineer’s direcon. You might occasionally see engineers direcng a
character to repair something over the radio, if they’re stuck in a busted fighter.
This generally requires the non-engineer to Shake Off the risk of disaster, before
the engineer can roll the Engineer Role Move. The two characters don’t get to

Player moves
Support each other in this instance – there’s no easy way for the engineer to
ancipate what the other character might mess up, and the other character
doesn’t have the experse to do more than follow instrucons. Even if
everything goes well, the GM sll gets to choose from the 7–9 list for not having
the right crew.

What if there’s no Engineer? Things break, and if nobody chooses the Engineer
Role then there’s nobody to fix them, right? Well, no. There’s probably sll
engineers on board. You just won’t be delving into the detail of how you fix
engineering problems. If there’s something important that breaks, it sll gets
fixed. But the GM gets to make Moves as usual. Maybe it takes a long me to
get fixed, or requires some resource that the characters will have to get hold of.
Or maybe not – since nobody has chosen the Engineer Move, it’s legit to just
keep engineering problems off-camera enrely.

115
Player Moves

Marine
When you Engage In Bale, you choose one less opon on a 7–9.

Pilot
When you pilot a fighter, you can pilot it without incident in normal situaons, and
depending on the capabilies of the individual cra, you can use it to Engage In
Bale, Shake Off a threat, Support or Interfere with other pilots, or Seek Out when
scoung. Other characters who aempt to do this are courng disaster – the GM
can make a Move in response.

In addion when you Engage In Bale while pilong a combat-ready ship, you
choose one less opon on a 7–9.

Influencer
When you Pull Strings, you may choose one more opon from the first list or
have the GM choose one less from the second list.

An Influencer might be a polician, fixer, or any well-connected person.

Invesgator
When you Seek Out, you choose your 7–9 result instead of the GM. On a 10+ the
GM may offer you something extra in addion to what you were looking for – if
you take it, though, you must choose from the 7–9 list.

An Invesgator could be a researcher, journalist or any perspicacious person.

116
Example of play
Grace is GMing a game of Last Fleet with Alex (playing pilot Amos “Ace” Acker
the Aries), Clare (playing Commander Constanca Catan the Capricorn) and Leroy
(playing Lieutenant Luis Lauder the Libra, the chief engineer). I promise, no
more alliteraon aer this.
Grace: Ok, that’s setup mostly done. All we
need to do now is to create the starng
situaon for the game. I’m going to ask
you each a queson about it.
Amos, you’ve just escaped from a crisis.
What threat were you facing?
Alex: Oh, ok. Let’s say a bomb went off right
on Patroclus, and the fuel tanks caught
fire.
Grace: Cool. Constanca, whose quick-thinking
acons got you out of it?
Clare: I think that’d be me. I vented all the
oxygen from that whole secon of the
ship, pung out the fire but also losing
us a lot of our fuel, and ejecng a whole
bunch of crew into space.
We assume here that the
world, fleet, enemy and
characters have already been
created.
Grace is using the first
session quesons. She’s
Speaking To The Ficon,
addressing the character
Example of play
Amos rather than the player
Alex.
Alex made this answer up.
He’s Playing To Find Out
What Happens.
Grace thinks that this is a
prey bad situaon already,
so she focuses on how it was
resolved rather than making
it worse.
Clare jumps on the
opportunity to focus on her
playbook’s schck, which is
taking decisions at a cost.
117
Example of Play

Grace: That’d do it. I’m going to go ahead and
create a fuel Shortage for that. I’ll start a
Doom Clock to go with it. You’ve got four
jumps le before you run out of fuel.
Grace is Imposing The
Mechanical Consequences of
the stuff that Clare just
described happening in the
ficon.

Great. One last queson. Luis, who got

hurt in the crisis?
Leroy: Let’s say me. I was with my crew fighng Leroy picks up what Clare
narrated a moment ago. He’s
the fire, trying to stop it geng into the a Engaging The People Around
fuel tanks. I got badly burned and had to be The Table – and seng up
some prey cool
dragged off to sick bay – otherwise I’d have recriminaons.
been blown into space with the others.
Grace: Ok. So it’s the day aer the crisis. Grace Makes Space For
Interpersonal Drama by
Patroclus is safely parked in the lee of a taking the opportunity to
nearby moon. The fires are out. There’s emphasize that they’re
starng the game in a quiet
no immediate threat to the fleet. Amos, phase.
what are you doing right now?

Alex I think I spent the last few hours

desperately trying to pick up any
survivors from when the commander
vented the ship. There weren’t many. I’m
exhausted, and I’m heading to the ship’s
bar to get wasted.
Grace: Sounds like you’re planning to Let Anyone could have called out
the Move here, but the GM is
Loose? oen the person most likely
to do it, and Grace is no
Alex: Yup. excepon.

Grace: Cool. Are you going alone, or is anyone

else in the frame for a night on the lash?

118
Alex looks around the table. The others shake
their heads.

Leroy: I’d come, but I’m in intensive care.

Alex: Guess I’m going alone.

Grace: Ok, so what’s the ship’s bar like?
Alex: I don’t think Patroclus is ouied with
one as standard, but the crew have set
one up in an empty cargo hold. Its
makeshi furniture is old oil drums and
crates, and the glasses are a hotchpotch
of mugs, too-fancy champagne flutes,
Grace uses the Ask Quesons
technique.
Again, Alex is just making this
stuff up. The random ideas
he comes up with on the
spot are good stuff.

Example of play
jars and so on.
Grace: Cool. Let’s roll the Move now and see It would be fine to describe
the scene a bit more first, but
what comes out of it. by rolling straight away Grace
can jump to the acon.
Alex rolls 2d6 and adds his Raw, which is +1.
He gets an 8.

Alex: Ok, a Weak Hit. I get to choose an opon

but you decide how it plays out. So, I
think I’ll take “end up in the arms of
someone I shouldn’t”.

Grace: Nice. Ok, let me think who that might be.

Clare: Actually, if you don’t have anyone This would have been a good
moment for Grace to Ask A
specific in mind, it could be me. I Queson, but Clare offers
wouldn’t go to the bar with “Ace”, but herself up anyway.

ending up in bed together sounds

wonderfully inappropriate.

119
Example of Play
Grace: Cool, that sounds fun. So in effect you
are leng loose together, even though
you hadn’t planned to. The result affects
you both, ok?
Clare and Alex nod.
Grace: Great. So you’re both hing the bole
hard in different parts of the bar, and
end up hing the dance floor at the
same me. We see a bit of dancing,
which gets closer together–
Clare: The commander’s dance moves are
prey great, actually.
Alex: Not Amos. He’s one step above dad
dancing.
Grace: Haha! Now I’m imagining his kids
watching in horror. Anyway, lile bit of
canoodling, and cut to someone’s
quarters. Hmm, is that ok? You don’t
mind me narrang you an off-screen sex
scene?
Both give the thumbs-up.
Grace: Cool. Whose quarters is it?
Clare: Definitely mine. No way is the
commander doing the walk of shame
out of Amos’s room.
120
It’s Grace’s decision what
happens, but obviously she
accepts Clare’s offer. She
checks in that they’re ok with
the result affecng them
both.
Grace could have instead told
them what happens and get
them to describe it
themselves. Either way is
fine.
Obviously given it involves
their characters, the players
get to come in with their own
descripon too though.
Grace is doing a safety check
here. Mechanically it’s her
call what happens but of
course she’s not going to
force a sex scene on two
unwilling players without
checking.
Asking Quesons again (and
it’s a good one).
Grace: Ok, fair. So, what do you do aerwards?
Cuddling, more sex…?
Clare: I think once her desires are sasfied,
Catan kicks him out. Don’t want him
leaving in the morning when people
might see.
.
These sort of details are
great for establishing some of
the emoonal charge of a sex
scene without geng into
unnecessary explicit detail.

Alex: Wow. That’s nice. Cool ok, so Ace is

standing in the corridor outside in his
boxers, carrying his clothes in his arms.
Clare: I reckon only some of your clothes.
Alex: Haha, yeah.
Grace: Cool! So. Ace, how do you feel about

Example of play
what just happened?

Alex: I think Amos prey much does this sort

of thing all the me. No big deal.
Bragging about geng with the XO is
going to be great.

Clare winces.

Alex: Is that ok?

Clare: Oh yeah, I look forward to the fallout.

Just, you know. Goddamn it, Amos.
Grace: Cool, so I think we’ll come back to
Amos’s ill-advised bragging later on, but
for now shall we find out what’s
happening with Luis?
This is Grace calling the scene
to a close. It’s not like Grace is
the final authority on this –
anyone could say “hold on,
there’s something more I want
to do”, if they wanted to.

121
Example of Play

Clare: Well actually, at the risk of seeming like

I’m inserng myself into everyone’s
scenes, I was thinking Catan might go
and see Lauder for an alcohol- and guilt-
fuelled visit.

Leroy: Well, Luis ain’t going anywhere, so that’s

fine with me.
Clare: Cool. Ok, so Catan shows up at sickbay,
dismisses the doctor and goes to sit
down beside Luis’s bed. Her uniform is
Noce here how Clare and
Leroy decide they want a
scene, and frame it, without
the GM geng involved.

dishevelled. Not to menon her hair.

Leroy: Luis is sing up in bed, studying a tablet

loaded up with work stuff. His head is
bandaged up prey good. As you
approach he looks up and scowls.

“What are you doing here. Commander.”

Clare: Catan’s eyebrows shoot up. She is not

used to being spoken to in this way.

“I just thought I’d check in on my chief

engineer. You took a prey bad beang,
Chief. How are you doing?”
Leroy: “Oh, I’m recovering fine, Commander. I Here Leroy calls out his own
move. Anyone else could
can’t say the same for the people who have done so if he hadn’t.
got flushed into space.” I’m Calling
Catan on her Shit. I’m saying she’s a
cold-hearted sociopath.

122
 What I want is for her to prove she isn’t
is for her to admit she was wrong and
apologize
Leroy rolls the dice and gets a 10. Clare has to do what Luis
asked her to or forcefully
Clare: Yeah, not happening. “I make no apology refuse.
She chooses to refuse, and so
for doing what’s necessary to save the
she has to Mark Pressure.
ship, Lieutenant. Those people died
doing their duty. My duty is to make the
hard decisions, and I’ll do that whenever
I need to.”

Catan came here to apologize but she’s

Example of play
not the sort to do it on demand. She
gets up and leaves.
Grace: Nice. I like it. Anyway, as you’re leaving Normally you’d leave a longer
quiet period aer some
sickbay, the sirens start blaring red alert. acon, to allow everyone
The ship is under aack. me to explore their
relaonships and get their
Clare: I’m heading for the command centre, via Pressure down. This is a
game example, so we’re
a splash of cold water in the face. cung the interpersonal
drama short.
Alex: Same. I mean, flight deck. But same.

Leroy: Yeah, me too.

Grace: Hmm, ok. You’re sll in prey bad shape,

right?

Leroy: Right.

123
Example of Play
Grace: Ok, that may come back to bite you later.
No effect right now, but if things get hot
later on, you may end up having to shake
that wound off.
Leroy: Yeah, I figured.
Grace: Great. So, fighters scramble. Ace, you
shoot out into space in your fighter. You
can see the massive, terrifying bulk of a
Corax tendril, the Tenebrium ri glowing
around it. Corax pod ships are pouring
out. The civilian ships are moving to get
behind Patroclus, but the Menelaus has
goen itself stuck on the wrong side of
the acon and there’s pod ships
inbound. What do you do?
Alex: I’m geng in between the pod ships and
Menelaus. I’m gonna hold them off unl
she can rejoin the fleet.
Grace: Awesome. Roll to Engage In Bale.
Alex: Argh, that’s a 4. I can get it up to a 6 but
I’d hit Breaking Point and I’d sll miss the
roll.
Clare: Hold up there. I get to use Taccian to
help out here, right?
124
Grace is Making The Ficon
And Mechanics Transparent.
Grace is bringing the world to
life with her descripons,
while also signalling a general
threat (the tendril and pod
ships) and a more immediate
one (the aack on
Menelaus). While at it, she’s
seng the clock cking and
launching a wave of ships.
Here Alex has rolled a Miss.
But he can use Raise The
Pressure to increase the roll
by up to three – or he would,
if he didn’t already have
three Pressure Marked.
Luckily Clare is able to help.
Taccian hold ought to have
been worked out at the start
of the bale but obviously
nobody makes a fuss about it.
Grace: Sure. Let’s see, you’ve got a good view of
the balefield and direct comms, your
people have trained for this sort of
conflict, but you didn’t plan this specific
situaon. Right?

Clare: Seems right to me. So I get two Hold, I

can spend one of it to Support Amos.
Grace: What are you actually doing to support Grace is checking that the
trigger for the Support Move
him? has actually been met.

Clare: I’ll order the big guns to light up the

enemy formaon with some flak. I can’t

Example of play
hit them, but I can force them to scaer
and make life easier for Ace.

Grace: Cool cool, Mark Pressure and roll the

Support move.
Clare: Nice, I got a 10! Clare gets a 10, so that
means she gets two Hold,
Alex: That’s a relief. Ok, are you giving me +2? which she can spend on
giving Ace bonuses and other
That would save me from hing help.
Breaking Point.

Clare nods.
Alex: Cool, so I’ll hold them off, but I take fire
in the process. Rolling to Weather
Serious Harm… that’s an 8. I could stand
to roll a bit beer here. I guess I do hit
Breaking Point aer all, and, uh, I take
damage to a specific system.
Alex could have chosen to
leave someone exposed, but
that carries its own risks. As it
is, his Weather Serious Harm
Move prey much has the
same effect.

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Example of Play

Grace: Noice. Ok, you race in and blast the pod

ship formaon apart with Catan’s
support, scaering the survivors and
buying Menelaus me to get back to the
fleet. But, you take a hit from a pod ship,
and your engines power down with an
off-key groaning noise. Oh, and I’m
Marking the Bale Clock, so that’s one
Arion.

Ace is dead in the water and the

surviving pod ships rally to close in on
his posion. What does anyone do?

Leroy: Goddamn it, Amos. Ok, I’m geng on

the comm. Time to see whether I can
talk through a repair via a
knuckleheaded fighter jock…

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Example of play
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playbooks

Playbooks

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Playbooks

Aries a
You’re a creature of passion. Whether it’s work or play, you throw yourself into it
with a lack of restraint that can oen get you into trouble. You’ll go where angels
fear to tread, and cross lines that others balk at.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the remainder as +0.
You will probably want to take Raw +1, since a lot of your
Moves are powered by it.

Aries Moves
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook Moves
or Role Moves. At least one must be a Role Move.

Maverick. When you challenge authority or

defy orders, Mark XP and take +1 ongoing to any
associated rolls.

To use this Move you must be going against legimate

orders/authority – it doesn’t count if someone gives
you “orders” who had no right to, or if you
challenge someone’s “authority” who isn’t
in a genuine posion of authority. You get
the bonus for as long as you’re
undertaking the acvity that was in
defiance of orders or acons that are
directly challenging someone’s
authority.

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 Aries

Shotgun Diplomacy.* When you Call Someone On Their Shit by geng right up in
their face and giving them your opinion with both barrels, roll +Raw instead of
+Hard. If you do, on a 10+ you Erase one Pressure in addion to the usual benefits.

Shotgun Diplomacy lets you reduce your own Pressure and/or social problems
when you Call Someone On Their Shit. At the same me, it sacrifices
persuasiveness and may make it prey hard for your target to do what you want.

Explosive Decompression. When you Let Loose in a conspicuous and completely

undisciplined way, on a Hit you can Erase one more Pressure than usual, but if you do
you must either choose one extra opon, or keep the normal number of opons but
let the GM decide the opon instead of you.

If you let the GM choose the opon on a 7–9, they’ll also be deciding the details of
what happens. So only choose that if you’re really happy with anything they might
choose! GM, the usual advice about not using this to humiliate people applies.

Thread The Needle. When you aempt a feat of skill that others would find

Playbooks
impossible, roll +Raw. On a 10+ you do it, and you can give yourself or another
character +1 Forward to capitalize on it. On a 7–9 you do it, but by the skin of your
teeth. Choose two: take –1 Forward as you are le off-balance, Mark Pressure as
you are bashed about, or ask the GM how your acon leaves you exposed.

You can’t aempt feats of skill unless you have appropriate skills. So if you want
to make it a feat of flying, you need to have the Pilot Role.

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Playbooks

Passions Run High. When you throw yourself into an intense relaonship with
someone, you can roll Reach Out to them with +Raw instead of +Warm. If you
do, replace the 7–9 result as follows: They Erase one Pressure as normal, but
you feel dissasfied – you can sll Erase one Pressure, but only if you
immediately do something to Let Loose or go and find someone else for your
passion to run high with.

The relaonship doesn’t have to be romanc in nature.

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Fulfil your short-term desires or whims, trampling over someone else in the
process.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who wants to win my admiraon? How have I impressed them?
! Who do I have a rivalry with? How did we recently compete, and who came
out on top?
! Who thinks I’m out of control? What did I do that crossed the line?
! Who is my partner in crime? What ancs did we get up to together?

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 Taurus

Taurus b
Selfless, principled, and tough as nails, you’re willing to
put yourself in harm’s way to protect others or to do
what’s right. Let the enemy dish out whatever
punishment they like – you can take it. Let those of
lesser beliefs try to knock you off course – you’re
unstoppable.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the
remainder as +0. You may wish to take Hard +1,
since several of your Moves use it.

Taurus Moves

Playbooks
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook
Moves or Role Moves. At least one must be a
Role Move.

Unshakeable Beliefs.* When you sck to your

principles by refusing on moral grounds to: follow
an order; accept a deal; or comply when
someone Calls You On Your Shit, roll +Hard.

On a Hit, the other party must Mark

Pressure, and you Mark XP. On a 10+ you
also negate any Pressure Marks or
Relaonship reducon that you would

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Playbooks

normally get from the decision not to comply (e.g. from someone Calling You
On Your Shit).

You only negate the Pressure/Relaonship reducon that directly follows from
the decision not to comply, not any consequences that flow from that.
Supposing that you are ordered not to connue a rescue mission because it’s
too dangerous, and you refuse because it’s your moral duty to carry it through;
then on a 10+ you won’t Mark any Pressure if e.g. someone Calls You On Your
Shit, but you would sll be at risk of Marking Pressure as part of the rescue
mission, if you’re aacked or such.

No One Le Behind. When you act to rescue someone from danger, take +1
Ongoing to associated acons. If you rescue them, Mark XP and Erase one
Pressure. If you fail to rescue them, you must Mark Pressure.

Survivor. When you venture away from the fleet, whether deliberately (on an
away mission, say) or by accident (if you are captured for example), roll +Hard.
On a 10+, Hold two, on a 7–9, Hold one. You can spend your Hold one for one to
ask one of these quesons and take +1 Forward to acng on the answers:
! What’s my best escape route/way in/way through?
! What is the biggest threat here?
! What should I be looking out for?
! Which threat is most vulnerable to me?

You’ll Have To Go Through Me. When you get between another character and a
threat, roll +Hard. On a Hit, they’re safe for now, but you’re in the crosshairs.
On a 7–9, you take the immediate impact of the threat as well, so any injuries,
Pressure or similar that the other character would have taken happen to you
instead.

Wing Man. When you Support someone, you get one extra Hold, even on a Miss.

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 Taurus

True Love. Choose a character to be your love. You take +1 Ongoing to all
Moves targeng them (whether you’re aiming to help them or hurt them). If
your true love ever dies, you immediately hit Breaking Point. Later, you may
choose a new true love if you wish.

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Dig your heels in and refuse to compromise, despite the consequences.
! Hurl yourself into certain doom to protect someone else. If you choose this,
you’re automacally lost, captured or killed.

Relationship questions
! Who am I in love with? Why haven’t I told them yet?
! Whose life have I saved? How?
! Who have I sacrificed greatly for? What did I give up for them?

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! Whose plans have I got in the way of? How?

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Playbooks

Gemini c
The war is important, sure, but that doesn’t
mean it’s the only priority. You’ve got your own
agenda, even if it’s just as simple as looking aer
number one. Somemes you’ve done things that
others might consider dubious, but nobody’s
perfect, right? You’ll do what you must to protect
your interests, like anyone else would.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the
remainder as +0. You’ll probably want to set
Smooth to +1, since a lot of your Moves are
powered by it.

Gemini Moves
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook
Moves or Role Moves. At least one must be a
Role Move.

Compromised.* You’ve done something that

could get you into serious shit. Agree what it is
with the GM, and what your cover story is. When
you elaborate on your cover story with some
convincing bullshit, you get +1 to Cover Up. In
addion, at the start of the session, if you’re not
currently in the middle of trying to throw

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 Gemini

someone off the scent, roll +Smooth. On a Hit you’re offered an opportunity

that nobody would ever give you if they knew. Mark XP and Erase one Pressure
if you take it. On a 7 or less, though, someone noces a flaw in your cover story.

The bullshit might be convincing, yes, but just remember that whatever it is, if
they believe it then they’ll act like it’s true. That can come back to haunt you
later on unl you’re forced into the most delighully contorted lies.

Playing Both Sides. When you consort with a dangerous facon, roll to Pull
Strings with a +1 bonus. On a 7 or less they always demand a favour in return,
and their favours are always either uerly terrible or seemingly innocuous. If you
do it, they’ll give you what you want even on a Miss.

The enemy counts as a dangerous facon, but there’s plenty of other opons:
criminals, terrorists, polical dissidents, and more.

The Personal Touch.* When you give someone your undivided aenon and
make them feel special, roll +Smooth. On a 10+ you both Erase one Pressure.

Playbooks
On a 7–9, only they do. Either way, you ask them a queson from the list
below:
! What has been troubling you lately?
! What do you most need at the moment?
! What secret have you been holding on to?
! What do you most care about?
! How could I touch your heart?

Web Of Influence. When you do someone a favour or improve a Relaonship

with someone, add them to your web of influence. When you Pull Strings to
ask for their help with something that they can personally deliver, you can
remove them from your web of influence before you roll to automacally get a
Strong Hit.

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Playbooks

Louche. When you Let Loose by indulging in a fancy, rakish way, roll +Smooth
instead of +Raw. If you do, add these opons to the normal list:
! Someone else flips out at you, creang a scene .
! Someone else joins in, takes it too far, and gets into trouble.

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Betray someone who trusted you.
! Reveal you’re a traitor who was working against the fleet all along, and
become an NPC.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who suspects I’m up to something? What aroused their suspicions?
! Who owes me for something? What was it?
! Who needs me, warts and all? What recent indiscreon have they
overlooked?
! Who thinks I’m a dangerous liability? Why haven’t they taken acon yet?

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 Cancer

Cancer d
This fleet and the people in it maer to you. It’s more than just a mission to you,
more than saving the human race, even. Your friends, your colleagues, your
people – nothing maers more. And because that love shines through in your
words and deeds, they look up to you, too.

You’re a skilled leader, always ready with inspiring words or wise counsel. You care
about the people of the fleet – maybe too much. Some say you’re geng so.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the remainder as +0. You probably
want to take Warm +1, since several of your Moves use it.

Playbooks
Playbooks

Cancer Moves
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook Moves or Role Moves. At least
one must be a Role Move.

Turn A Blind Eye.* When you let someone off the hook for quesonable
behaviour, roll +Warm. On a 10+, choose two, on a 7–9 choose one:
! Say how you shield them from any punishment they ought to have suffered,
and you Erase one Pressure.
! Say how you quell any public disapproval they should have faced, and they
Erase one Pressure.
! They don’t want to let you down, increase your Relaonship by one.

Don’t Let Me Down. When you set high expectaons for someone, roll +Warm.
On a Strong Hit, they Hold two and can spend their Hold to gain +1 on a roll to
meet those expectaons; if they succeed in meeng those expectaons, they
Erase one Pressure and you Mark XP. On a 7–9, the same, but they also Mark
Pressure right now.

So Say We All!* When you make an inspiring speech, roll +Warm. On a Hit,
choose two:
! Urge your audience to take an acon. They get +1 Forward towards doing it.
! Everyone who listens to your words and takes them into their heart Erases
one Pressure.
! Erase one Arion.

On a 10+, your audience’s faith in you bolsters you. Erase one Pressure.

On a 7–9, everyone is looking to you to be the strong one. You must Mark
Pressure.

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 Cancer

Stalwart Defender.* While you stand in defence of someone, or something,

that really maers to you, you get +1 Ongoing to any roll that helps protect it. If
you have to abandon it, Mark Pressure.

Walk Out Of This Room While You Sll Can. When you finally let someone
know they’ve gone too far, Call Them On Their Shit. If they don’t do what
you’re asking them to (whether openly and forcefully or otherwise), they must
Mark Pressure equal to your current Relaonship level with them, and then
reduce the Relaonship level to one.

If they openly and forcefully refuse, they get the above Pressure reducon
instead of the usual requirement to Mark Pressure.

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Give up on someone, withdrawing your protecon and punishing them with
the full weight of your authority.

Playbooks
Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who is a close blood relave of mine? What has recently caused fricon
between us?
! Who has me as their mentor? What do they need my advice on right now?
! Who did I forgive for a major frak-up? What have they done that I don’t yet
know about?
! Who chafes against my authority? What rule or command have I imposed on
them?

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Playbooks

Leo e
Confident, commied, inspiring. Where others feel doubt or
uncertainty, you step boldly into the fray. You’re a leader –
not a great taccian or strategist, but a magnec individual
who people want to follow. Where will you lead them? Is
their faith in you jusfied?

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1
and the remainder as +0. You
probably want to take Warm +1, since several of your
Moves use it.

Moves
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook Moves or
Role Moves. At least one must be a Role Move.

Lead By Example. When you throw yourself into the

fray, making a Move that targets a problem directly,
you can roll the Support Move straight aerwards to
help anyone following up on your acons. If you do,
you take +1 Forward to your roll, and do not have
to Mark Pressure as the Move normally requires.

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 Leo

Smoke Me A Kipper – I’ll Be Back For Breakfast.* When you show off in front of
a public audience, roll +Warm. On a 10+ they’re wowed, choose two (no
duplicates):
! Erase one Arion.
! Erase one Pressure.
! Take +1 Forward to proving how great you are.
! Someone in the audience is impressed by you, or wants to impress you,
or both.

On a 7–9 choose one, but also choose a consequence from Let Loose.

Lord Flashheart. When you turn on the charm, roll +Warm. On a Hit you dazzle
your target with your charisma. NPCs do what you want them to, as long as it
doesn’t involve major and direct harm to something they care about. PCs Mark
XP if they do it, and must Mark Pressure if they don’t. On a 10+ you take +1
Forward to any move that exploits their weakness.

Playbooks
Charismac. When you advocate passionately for a cause, roll +Warm. On a Hit
you’re compelling; NPCs in the audience do an acon you’ve called for, or
believe a truth you’ve put forward. In addion on a 7–9, someone is inspired to
fanacal acon. The GM chooses:
! They do something drasc to further the cause.
! They demand that you do something indefensible to further the cause, and
if you don’t they’ll come aer you instead.

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Playbooks

Followers. A few dozen people that are personally loyal to you. When you act
with their support, take +1 Ongoing to relevant rolls. Choose one:
! Military subordinates. They’re skilled at what they do and they’ll follow your
orders as long as it isn’t obviously treacherous.
! Religious fanacs who see you as a prophet. They’ll do anything you want,
even sacrifice their own lives, if they believe it’s for the faith.
! Criminals. They’ve got access to weapons, illegal supplies and hiding places.
They’ll do what you want if they get a cut of the profits.
! Polical followers with widespread connecons, and willing to use violence.
They’ll do what you want if they think it’s for their cause.

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Humiliate someone else publicly.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who hero-worships me? What could I do to break their trust?
! Whose is one of my followers? How do they feel about that?
! Who has seen the dark side of my charisma? What went wrong?
! Who resents my social posion? How did I recently trample on their
feelings?

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 Virgo

Virgo f
Doing this job is an awesome responsibility. If
you fall short, it could mean the end of
everything. You take that responsibility
seriously. You need to be the best – to
be perfect. Somemes that means
neglecng anything outside the job, but that’s a
sacrifice you’re happy to make.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the
remainder as +0. You may wish to take Sharp +1,
since a couple of your Playbook Moves use it.

Virgo Moves

Playbooks
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook
Moves or Role Moves. At least one must be a Role
Move.

Single-Minded.* When the pressure is off but you stay

focused on a task or mission, Mark Pressure. While you
stay focused, every me you take an acon directly
related to compleng the task/mission, you take +1
Forward. If at any me you Erase Pressure, you lose your
focus and no longer get the benefits of this Move. Leng
Loose or Reaching Out definitely count as not staying
focused on your task or mission.

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Playbooks

Squadron Leader. When you personally lead a mission, roll +Sharp. On a 10+,
Hold three. On a 7–9 Hold one. Spend your Hold to give another character an
order and give them +1 Forward to execute it.

By The Numbers. When you follow a plan to the leer, say what the plan is and
roll +Sharp. On a 10+, anyone following you gets +1 Ongoing while following the
plan. On a 7–9, something unexpected happens straight away, but you’re well
prepared. Say what needs doing to handle it and give someone +1 Forward to
deal with the problem.

Solo Mission. When you go aer a tough target by yourself, you can roll any
Move against that target using +[your current Pressure minus two] in place of
your usual Stat.

For example, if you currently have three Pressure boxes Marked, you can roll +1
instead of your usual Stat.

Don’t forget the maximum total bonus is +4.

Smmed To The Eyeballs. When you’re mainlining smms, you get two extra
Pressure boxes for the current task or mission, and won’t hit Breaking Point
unless you Mark all seven boxes. When you complete the mission or task, you
lose the extra box, so if you’ve got five marked you immediately hit Breaking
Point as usual. In addion, you have a new Breaking Point acon “overdose and
require intensive care”.

Note that Smmed To The Eyeballs combines with Solo Mission. For example, if
you have six Pressure boxes Marked, solo mission would then give you +4 to all
of your rolls!

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 Virgo

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Sck to a plan rigidly, aer it’s obviously failed.
! Overdose and require intensive care (if you have Smmed To The Eyeballs).

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who is the only person that can get through my reserve? What went wrong
when we last had fun together?
! Who knows my value? What did I do to earn their respect?
! Who knows how close I am to cracking? What did I do recently to reveal the
pressure I’m under?
! Who did I let down and hasn’t yet forgiven me? What for?

Playbooks

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Playbooks

Libra g
The enemy can destroy us from the outside, but holding them off
is no good if the fleet tears itself apart. To stop that happening, it
needs people like you. You’re a skilled polician and leader. You
know what needs to be done, and what people need to
hear, to keep the fleet together. That’s exactly what
you’ll do.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the
remainder as +0. You may wish to take Warm +1, since
several of your Moves use it.

Libra Moves
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook Moves or Role
Moves. At least one must be a Role Move.

High Stakes. When you Pull Strings to tackle a crisis on the

fleet, on a 10+ Erase one Arion in addion to the usual
benefits of the Move. You can Mark Pressure or Mark
Arion to cancel a result from the 7–9 list, aer the GM
has chosen.

Fireside Chat. When you Pull Strings or Call Someone On Their

Shit by talking to an individual one on one, treang them like an
equal, you roll +Warm instead of the usual stat. If they do what
you’re demanding them to, they Erase one Pressure in addion to
any other benefits.

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 Libra

Knew I Could Count On You.* When you publicly congratulate someone on a

job well done, roll +Warm. On a 10+, choose two of the benefits below. On a 7–
9, choose one.
! They Erase one Pressure.
! Improve your Relaonship with them by one level.
! Erase one Arion.
! Declare they were acng on your orders and redirect any social
consequences or punishment associated with their acons to you.

A Special Task. When you personally give someone a special job or mission, tell
them what you want them to do. They take +1 Ongoing when they priorize
that over their official dues. If they succeed, you both Mark XP.

Wise Counsel. When you speak privately with someone about a problem, you
may each give each other one piece of sincere advice. You each Mark XP if you
follow the others’ advice.

Playbooks
Moral Compass. When you Call Someone On Their Shit by reminding them of
what really maers, on a Hit they Mark one more Pressure than usual if they
don’t do what you asked them to.

This means even if they openly and forcefully refuse to do what you asked, they
Mark two Pressure instead of only one. If they take one of the other opons
that don’t involve complying, they Mark one Pressure.

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Playbooks

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Insist on your way, ignoring beer advice to follow your preferred approach.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who believes in my leadership? What could I do that would let them down?
! Who do I confide my doubts to? What regret have I shared with them alone?
! Who has suffered because of a decision I made?
! Who do I go to when I need a difficult task done? What task am I about to
give them?

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 Scorpio

Scorpio h
Something’s wrong. Maybe you woke up from
a bad dream only to find that the things you
did weren’t a fantasy at all. Maybe you feel a
strange fascination for the enemy. You’re not
sure who you really are, or if you can trust
yourself. Luckily you’re good at hiding it. If anyone
else suspected, it could land you in the brig – or the
airlock.

Note: playing Scorpio means that some part of

you is secretly working against the fleet. But
that does not mean you are a villain; you are
playing the part of you that is on humanity’s side.
The enemy agent may come out and do bad things,

Playbooks
but afterwards you regain control and continue to
fight for humanity.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the
remainder as +0. You may wish to take Smooth +1,
since some of your Playbook Moves use it – and it
will be important for concealing the results of
your Sleeper Agent rolls. Alternatively you
might want Sharp +1 to make your Sleeper
Agent rolls less disastrous!

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Playbooks

Scorpio Moves
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook Moves or Role Moves. You must
take Sleeper Agent. At least one other must be a Role Move.

Sleeper Agent.* At the start of each session, if you aren’t currently in the
middle of dealing with the fallout from your last Sleeper Agent Move, you’ve
set something up to damage the fleet. Roll +Sharp. On a 10+ choose two, on a
7–9 choose one:
! You discover warning signs before your acons have their full effect.
! You haven’t le any tell-tale evidence that someone else might discover.
! There won’t be widespread consequences.

On a 6 or less, you don’t get any of these choices.

In addion, you get an addional advance opon:

! Erase the Sleeper Agent Move and gain another Scorpio Move.

The Sleeper Agent Move means your character isn’t fully aware of their acons.
Some part of them works against the fleet, but they don’t know it’s happening
unl it’s too late. Maybe it’s like sleepwalking, or perhaps you have two
personalies that operate independently of each other. This could be the result
of mind control, or maybe the saboteur is the “real” you, and your day-to-day
personality is just a construct. Whatever the explanaon, you don’t play a villain,
you may well be a hero, and you would probably be horrified by your acons if
you knew about them.

If you discover warning signs before your acons have their full effect, that
means you get some kind of evidence that something is up, and that it was
something to do with you. For instance, you might discover an empty bole of
rat poison in your locker, and then one of the workers in the kitchen is dragged

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 Scorpio

into sickbay voming and in crical condion, with an hour to go before the
pilots have their main meal.

If you don’t choose not to leave any tell-tale evidence then that means there
will be some tell-tale evidence! You’ll be at risk of discovery. It is up to the GM
whether they want to give you the opportunity to cover it up, or have someone
discover it before you can. Either way you’ll have your work cut out to keep
your involvement from coming to light.

If the consequences won’t be widespread, that means it will affect a small

number of people, and those people aren’t completely vital to the fleet. The
results will sll be very serious for those people, of course. If you don’t choose
this then the results will affect lots of people.

Manipulave. When you Reach Out by playing on someone’s emoons or

sympathies, roll +Smooth instead of +Warm. If you do, on a Hit you can demand
that they do something for you, and they only get the usual Pressure reducon

Playbooks
if they do it.

Close Ranks. When you take this, decide on a quirk for your character. Quirks
can include a romanc affair, addicon, black-market involvement, thrill seeker,
workaholic, [create your own]. You have a circle of NPC friends and associates
who aribute your suspicious behaviour to your quirk. When you ask one of
them to cover for you, as long as they can raonalize it as connected to your
quirk, you can roll to Cover Up with +1 Forward, and any negave
consequences from the Move hit them instead of you.

Feel free to create more than one quirk, or to invent more as you go. Your
friends will always need some kind of raonale to overlook stuff for you.

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Where There’s A Way… When you conceal an object or person on the fleet, roll
+Smooth. On a 10+, you know a route or locaon that will keep it from prying
eyes. On a 7–9 the GM chooses one:
! Someone noces that it’s missing.
! You can only keep it concealed during a limited me period.
! You’ll have to get past _____ first.

Alien Affinity. When you get close enough to the enemy that you could reach
out and touch them, say what you feel: love, lust, fear or revulsion. Choose two:
! You learn something new about the enemy. Ask the GM a queson.
! You are calmed and bolstered, Erase Pressure unl you have exactly two
boxes Marked, or Erase one Pressure (your choice).
! The enemy tells you something about yourself. Ask the GM what.

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Confess your doubts to another, openly revealing you think you may be
working for the enemy.
! Commit a visible and devastang aack against the fleet, blowing
something up or assassinang someone.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who has their doubts about me? How have I allayed them?
! Who is covering for me? What lie have they told for me?
! Whose ass did I recently save? How?
! Who is closest to me? What signs have they overlooked?

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 Sagittarius

Sagittarius i
The silver lining of the war is that you get to see and do things that prey much
nobody has seen and done before. It’s stressful and dangerous, but you’re meeng
new people and exploring new places all the me. That’s what you live for.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the
remainder as +0. You may wish to take Sharp +1,
since several of your Moves use it.

Sagittarius
Moves
You get three Moves – these can be
Playbook Moves or Role Moves. At least

Playbooks
one must be a Role Move.

Tinkerer. When you take

something apart, roll +Sharp. On a
Hit, pick one from the list below.

On a 10+ you also get +1 Forward

when you make use of the results.
! Learn how it works / what it
does.
! Gain useful parts.
! Rebuild and improve it.

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Playbooks

Explorer. When you go somewhere nobody has ever gone before, roll +Sharp.
On a 10+, Hold two. On a 7–9 Hold one. Spend your Hold to ask quesons from
the list below, and take +1 Forward acng on each of the answers.
! What here is useful?
! What here is dangerous?
! Where is a good place to hide/defend/______?
! Where might I find _____?
! Who is in control here?

Geng To Know All About You.* When you get to know someone for the first
me, roll +Warm. On a Hit Erase one Pressure. On 10+ ask two quesons, on a
7–9 ask one:
! What are you afraid will happen?
! What do you hope will happen?
! What do you need forgiveness for?
! Who do you like/love/trust? (choose one)

For each one that they answer, they Erase one Pressure.

Walls Have Ears. When you surrepously listen in on a conversaon, roll

+Sharp. On a Hit, their unguarded moment reveals a useful secret. (PCs can
choose not to, but Mark one Pressure if they refuse.) On a 10+ you can also ask
a follow-up queson. On a Miss, you hear something you’d rather not hear.

In The Neighbourhood. At the start of the session, roll +Sharp. On a Hit, Hold
one. You can spend it at any me to show up in a scene, with or without
explanaon. On a 10+ you also get to declare one useful item or other person
you have with you. On a Miss, the GM Holds one and can spend it to dump you
somewhere at the wrong me and unprepared.

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 Sagittarius

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Wander alone into danger without help or backup.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who is always up for an adventure with me? Where did we last go together?
! Who is my closest friend? What do we do to blow off steam together?
! Who wants to stop my meddling? How have I recently pissed them off?
! Who has secret feelings about me? Why are they hiding them?

Playbooks

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Playbooks

Capricorn j
There is so much at stake in this war. If you hold back or show
weakness, that could be the end of everything. You’ll do what
needs to be done, no maer the cost. Some say your way is
ruthless or dangerous. You know that what’s truly
dangerous is taking half-measures.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the
remainder as +0. You may wish to set Hard to
+1, since several of your Moves use it.

Capricorn Moves
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook Moves or
Role Moves. At least one must be a Role Move.

Doomsayer. When you point out a problem with a

situaon or plan, say what how it should be handled and
roll +Sharp. On a 7–9 choose: they take +1 Ongoing to
follow your advice, or they Mark Pressure if they ignore it.
On a 10+, both. If the problem comes to pass, you Mark XP.

Zero Compromises. When you dispense unyielding

discipline to someone, say how you’re punishing them and
why, and roll +Hard. On a Hit your harsh remedies steady
the ship. Erase one Arion. If the target accepts your
jusce, on a 10+ they Erase one Pressure too. On a 7–9 you
take it too far. The target Marks Pressure.

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 Capricorn

No Half Measures. When you commit to a dangerous course of acon without

hedging your bets, Hold two. When something goes wrong, say how you double
down on your chosen course and roll +Hard. On a Hit, ignore the effects
(injuries, obstacles, etc) of the problem as you power through. On a 10+ take +1
Forward too. On a 7–9 Mark Pressure.

Acceptable Losses. When you tackle a problem directly without regard for
collateral damage on your own side, roll +Hard. On a Hit it’s devastangly
effecve. On a 10+ there’s no collateral damage, Erase one Arion. On a 7–9
your side suffer ill effects – the GM will say what happens, and Mark Arion.

Thrives Under Pressure. When everything is in chaos or your back is against the
wall, roll +Hard. On a 7–9, Hold one. On a 10+, Hold two. Spend your Hold to
ask quesons and take +1 Forward if you immediately act on the answers.
! What vulnerability can I exploit right now?
! What’s my best way out/through?
! What is the biggest threat right now?

Playbooks
You have to act on the answer right away. Any delay and you don’t get the
bonus.

The Old Familiar Sng. Choose a vice that you’re addicted to. When you Let
Loose with it, you Erase one more Pressure than usual (even on a Miss).
However, a 10+ counts as a 7–9. You also get an addional opon “go and give
someone your unvarnished opinion of them”.

Going and giving someone your unvarnished opinion of them may well trigger
Calling Them On Their Shit.

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Playbooks

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Overreact with brutal force to an internal crisis, coming down heavily on
anyone you blame or who won’t cooperate.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who has seen me come close to disaster? What prevented the worst from
happening?
! Who trusts my insncts? What would it take to change that?
! Who have I been through hell with? What life-or-death situaon did we
come through together?
! Who nurses a grudge against me? How did my acons hurt them?

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 Aquarius

Aquarius k
You’re as sharp as they come – you see through the lies and deceit that riddle
the fleet, and you’ll expose them all. Maybe you’re an official interrogator, or
perhaps you’re a journalist. You know how to get to the truth, through your
connecons or through asking the right quesons.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1
and the remainder as +0. You may
wish to take Sharp +1, since several of
your Moves use it.

Aquarius
Moves

Playbooks
You get three Moves –
these can be Playbook
Moves or Role Moves.
At least one must
be a Role Move.

Pointed Quesons.
When you
interrogate
someone, roll
+Sharp. On a 10+, you
can ask them two
quesons. On a 7–9, one.

161
16
61
Playbooks

NPCs will reveal the truth through their words or behaviour. PCs must do so or
Mark one Pressure for each queson they refuse. You get +1 Forward when
acng on the answers.
! What are you concealing?
! Who is pulling your strings?
! What are you planning to do next?
! What are you really feeling?
! How could I get your character to ____?

On Trial. When you Call Someone On Their Shit by publicly accusing them of a
crime, incompetence in their official role or deceiving the public, roll +Sharp. On
a 10+, regardless of what opon they choose they Mark one Pressure more
than usual; and in addion it’s obvious to everyone that you’re right, and they
must face whatever consequences flow from that. On a 7–9 they get the usual
opons for being Called On Their Shit.

When using On Trial, on a 10+ they Mark Pressure even if they comply with what
you want, and two Pressure if they openly and forcefully refuse.

Sculebu. When you tap your contacts for informaon and gossip, roll +Sharp.
On a 10+ you can ask two quesons. On a 7–9, ask one. You take +1 Forward
when acng on the answers.
! What’s the word on the street about this?
! Who could help with this?
! Where was _____ last seen and what were they up to?
! What should I be on the lookout for?

Truthspeaker. When you reveal something that others had been concealing, roll
+Sharp. On a 10+, the truth is out and widely believed, and Erase one Arion.
On a 7–9, it’s out, but people are alarmed or distressed, Mark Arion.

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 Aquarius

Dedicated Focus. When you dedicate yourself to a challenging task, you get +1
Ongoing on rolls that contribute to fulfilling that task. You get –1 Ongoing to
anything that takes you away from that task. At any me you can abandon the
task and Mark Pressure.

Abandoning the task doesn’t mean you’ve given up on it, and you may come
back to it later on. Choosing to do so simply means that you’re hit by the toll of
diverng your aenon from the task.

Breaking Point actions

Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Publicly accuse someone of something serious, before you’re ready to back
it up with evidence or polical support.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:

Playbooks
! Who is feeding me informaon on the quiet? What secret or rumour are
they about to tell me?
! Who do I suspect is up to no good? What lead do I have on them?
! Who has me as a confidante? What secret of theirs haven’t I spilled, and
why?
! Who sees me as a thorn in their side? How have I recently got in their way?

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Playbooks

Pisces l
Wise, otherworldly, visionary. You can tap into
something beyond yourself, to gain insights or power
that are simply not available to others. This makes you
strange and potenally unnerving to others. It may
make you an object of reverence or fear. It can
make you a potent weapon against the enemy.

Choosing this Playbook will introduce a more

overtly supernatural theme to the game. Of
course, it may not be literally supernatural: your
powers may represent something technological
or simply a sort of superhuman insight. It’s up
to you to define that according to your wishes, but do so
working with the group, since it can dramacally change
the feel of the story.

You’ll also noce that some of the moves can

potenally be combined in interesng ways. Can your
mind palace be used to make psychic contact with the
enemy? Does it count as a place that is beyond mere
mortals? Again, it’s up to you to define how they
interact (if at all), with the group.

Stats
Assign one stat as +1, one stat as –1 and the remainder
as +0. You may wish to take Hard +1, since several of
your Moves use it.

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 Pisces

Pisces Moves
You get three Moves – these can be Playbook Moves or Role Moves. At least
one must be a Role Move.

I Have Seen It. You receive occasional visions of the future. Once per session
when things are quiet, roll +Hard. On a 10+, Hold one Vision. You may spend
one Vision to declare you recognize this scene from a vision and:
! Tell someone what to do and, if they do it, they take +1 Forward and you
Mark XP.
! Describe or highlight a challenging risk or opportunity for the fleet. If the
fleet avoids the risk or seizes the opportunity, increase Momentum by one.

On a 7–9 choose:
! The visions are troubling, Hold one Vision but Mark Pressure.
! You have a respite from your visions, Erase one Pressure.

Playbooks
On a 6 or less the GM describes a terrible vision. If the fleet fails to prevent it
coming to pass, the GM sets Momentum to a new level of their choice.

You only get to roll I Have Seen It when things are quiet, not in the middle of a
mission or crisis. This may mean you don’t get to roll it every session.

When you spend your Hold can frame a brief flashback to the vision, if you like.

Inhuman Insight. When you make psychic contact with the enemy, roll +Hard. On
a Hit, you see them as they truly are; ask a queson from the list. When you act
on the answers, take +1 Forward. On a 7–9, you struggle to differenate the alien
mind from your own; Mark Pressure, and the enemy may ask a queson of you.
! How are the enemy weak right now?
! What is the biggest danger right now?

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Playbooks

! What are they planning to do next?

! What is their objecve here?
! What do they fear right now?

It is up to you how you make psychic contact with the enemy, and what this
looks like. GM: Ask quesons about this! Inhuman insight presents an
opportunity to make the enemy into more than just an external threat. You can
show how they are unnerving and monstrous inside as well as out, or humanize
them. Or beer, do both.

Mind Palace. You can withdraw into a trance-like state where you perceive
things and people that others cannot see. You can Let Loose inside these
visions. When you do, you roll +Hard instead of +Raw, and gain the following
addional opons:
! Become lost in your visions, and get distracted at a crucial moment.

! Learn an unwelcome truth from your visions.

On a 10+ you sll decide the details, but you’ll need to work with the GM on
any unwelcome truths you might learn.

When you choose from the standard opons, they may reflect you
inadvertently revealing the fact you’re having uncontrolled visions to another.

Mysc Aunement. When you walk in places that are beyond mere mortals,
you aune to the strange nature of the place. This makes you powerful: you can
make all your usual moves, but may roll +Hard in place of any other stat. It
makes you vulnerable, and the GM says how.

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 Pisces

This move could be used when you’re doing something (comparavely)

mundane like walking into an enemy ship, or it could be used when you’re
doing something much stranger like docking with an enemy computer system. It
might even apply when you are using other Pisces moves like Inhuman Insight
or Mind Palace. It is up to you to work out how you are able to make your usual
moves in a place where they might not seem to apply, and what this looks like.

GM: there is no direct mechanical effect that makes the character more vulnerable
when they use mysc aunement. It’s up to you to decide what this might mean in
each scene. If they roll a Miss – do something interesng.

Loved By The Faithful. You hold a special place in the hearts of those who
believe in your faith, whether by dint of official posion or spiritual status. You
take +1 to any Move that leverages that status.

Breaking Point actions

Playbooks
Your Breaking Point acons include:
! Become overwhelmed by a vision of a dark future that may yet come to pass.
! Reveal your inhuman nature for all to see.

Relationship questions
Ask at least two and take a level one Relaonship with the relevant characters:
! Who believes in me? What special role or desny do they see in me?
! Who sees past the mysque? What ordinary moment have we shared?
! Who fears or distrusts my power? What has turned them against me?
! Who did I have a signficant vision about? Has it come true yet?

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The Fleet

The Fleet
Rank – the basics
With the military forming a central plank of Last Fleet’s focus, it’s important to
have in mind who is high-ranking, who is middle-ranking and who is low-
ranking, if only so that you know who is giving orders and who is anxiously
awaing them. For named characters you’ll want to decide on a specific rank.
An example rank structure is shown on page 175. You’ll also want to fill key
posions, set out below. That’s sufficient if you don’t expect rank to be a major
focus of your game, but there’s more detail on rank and how to use it in Rank
and Duty, starng on page 172.

In addion to a character’s rank, they may occupy an important posion on the

ship:
! The Commanding Officer (CO) is the person in charge of a large ship. They
have final say on all decisions and the buck stops with them.
! The Execuve Officer (XO) is the second most senior posion on a ship. They
report to the CO and implement their decisions, and will oen take charge of
less strategic decision-making.
! If you have pilots, you should create the Commander of the Air Group (CAG).
They lead the fighter pilots on a large ship. They take part in mission
planning, brief the pilots and oen lead and coordinate the pilots during
missions.
! If you have marines, you should create the Commander of the Marines
(CM). They perform a similar role to the CAG, but in relaon to ground
troops.

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 Ships – the basics

Ships – the basics

Creang ships
Last Fleet doesn’t aempt to model the different types of ship you might
encounter in a space-based seng in much detail. I encourage you to make up
your own ship types and describe in cinemac terms what they look like.
Always name your ships and always make it clear what’s at stake if they’re
destroyed, including how many human lives will be lost.

Don’t forget, too, to create characters for your ship. Even relavely small and
inconsequenal ships can benefit from having a commanding officer for the
players to talk to when things get scky.

The main types of ship include:

! Baleships. Massive, heavily armed and armoured, and hosng lots of
starfighters.
! Frigates. Big, usually serving a specific purpose such as aack or support.
Somemes beer armed than the baleships.
! Starfighters. Small, short range ships, much faster than the larger ships,
designed for ship to ship combat, troop transport or scoung. These are the

Fleet
ships we see our Pilots flying.
! Civilian ships. These are of varying size and purpose (consider: freighter, fuel
liner, research ship, cruise liner, shule). They’re easily destroyed, even by
an individual starfighter, taking resources and hundreds or thousands of lives
with them.

For more detail about military ships, see page 178–179.

At a minimum, you’ll want your game to include one baleship, several civilian
ships, and a large number of starfighters.

169
The Fleet

Don’t forget that the enemy has their own ships, too – you can think about
them in the same classes as above, though obviously ships in the same class as
civilian ships may be a rather different beast. Their ships may have strange
funcons that are wildly different from human equivalents.

If you want to get into the detail of a specific ship, to help flesh out bales
involving that ship or scenes that take place on board it, here are some good
things to consider:
! What is the purpose of the ship? How big is it, and how many crew? What
does it look like?
! What is the general layout of the ship? Does it have a central corridor, a
circular circuit for travelling around the ship, is it arranged in levels with
elevators?
! What are the key locaons on board the ship and how do they fit into that
general layout? Where is the command centre/bridge, where are the
engines, crew quarters, flight desk?
! What are important social locaons? Is there a rec room, bar or holo deck?
Where do people go for peace and quiet – is there an observaon deck or a
verdant oxygen room?
! What defences does the ship have? Does it have any armour or weapons?
Are there strong-points near the airlocks, aimed at holding off boarding
acons? Or is it – as many civilian ships may be – effecvely defenceless?
! What are the ship’s weaknesses? Does it have exposed sensor arrays that
can be taken out, leaving it blind? Are the engines vulnerable to strike from
behind? Does it carry massive fuel tanks that are an explosion risk?

170
 Ships – the basics

Example ship: Patroclus

Here is an example ship, worked up using the prompts above.
! Patroclus is a massive carrier (~5km long), with a crew of 5000. It is
dominated by longitudinal armour plates, pocked with holes from past
bales, and the main weapon baeries that protrude from the sides like
spines.
! Command is located centrally, and corridors radiate out towards key
locaons around the ship, with a circuit corridor connecng them – like a
spider web.
! Apart from command, key locaons are the main gun baeries, on the port
and starboard sides, the fighter launch bay at the front, and the engines at
the rear.
! There’s a recreaon area on the front side of the ship, near the flight deck. It
has a bar, games tables, and gymnasium. The cargo holds are towards the
rear and a good place for secret assignaons.
! The ship has massive armour plates that cover most of its surface. These
plates protrude over the launch bays, protecng fighters as they launch into
bale. Side-facing flak cannons are the main offensive weapon, together
with shorter-ranged guns mounted in the grooves between the armour

Fleet
plates, for defence against incoming fighters.
! The ship’s underbelly is comparavely lightly armoured and protected only by
point defence. This is compounded by bale damage.

171
The Fleet

Rank and Duty: military hierarchy

in your game
By Joanna Piancastelli

For many story gamers, our insnct is to keep things loose and handwave
details in the service of more narrave freedom. But constraint can breed
creavity: and using a consistent structure for the military in your game’s
seng can open up relaonship dynamics and prompt play that you might miss
without seng down a set of rules for everyone to follow; like knowing who
you answer to and what’s on the line if you mess up.

In this oponal play module we’ll go through the basics of creang a consistent
military structure for your game, then look at how you can fill out the ranks
with characters and meaningful NPCs, and give you ps on how to turn a rigid
hierarchy into the sparking point for plenty of dramac play. Consider using it if
a significant number of players are interested in making military characters and
like the idea of building a shared understanding of how the military works.

To use this module the GM should read it, then help the group through the
quesons during the Fleet secon of the Seng Up Your Game process.

How rank works

Military hierarchy operates on a system of ranks and a chain of command to allow
the organized communicaon of informaon and orders.
! Ranks indicate seniority, and higher ranks generally correspond to having
more leadership training. A high rank comes with more responsibilies, but
also more privileges.

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 Rank and duty

! The chain of command means that even if someone outranks you they can’t
give you orders unless you are in their department and their direct
subordinate.

This structure makes it very efficient to get a lot of people acng quickly in
coordinaon, but also means that those at the boom are oen told only what
someone thinks they need to know, perhaps leaving them making hard
decisions with incomplete informaon.

It also opens up the possibility for one corrupt or incompetent individual in a

posion of authority to exert a bad influence across the whole military, and for
heroes in the lower ranks to act for the good of the fleet but sll get
reprimanded for disobeying orders.

In a seng where the military is prominent, you should have a goal for what
you want its role to be in the ficon. Is it a structure for a set of characters to
squabble and rebel within, or a backdrop of oppressive, authoritarian control
that low-ranked and civilian characters have very lile power to speak up about
without significant personal risk?

Setup acon: Discuss the tone of the military’s presence in your game and
ensure everyone is on the same page about what they want from it. Think

Fleet
about the role of the military in the fleet – do they only serve to protect against
outside threats, or have they ended up policing civilians as well, and what is the
impact of that?

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The Fleet

Ranks
Using ranks makes it easy to understand the role of all the military characters in
the game and their authority relave to one another. It also sets up the kind of
structural struggles each character will encounter – the Admiral of the Fleet has
different responsibilies and challenges to the most junior Lieutenant aboard,
for example.

There are many different rank structures used in sci-fi, and two opons are
presented here for you to consider and adapt for your own game. The decision
on which hierarchy to use should be based on more than just which set of ranks
sound snappier though, because ulmately it’s a much bigger queson about
the structure and class system of your seng’s society.

The 2-Tier Structure gives you Commissioned Officers, who have received
extensive leadership training before entering the field. This training is expensive
and presgious, so these characters likely come from a higher social class than
the enlisted personnel who only went to boot camp. Choosing this structure
implies your seng has a society with Haves and Have-Nots.

The 1Tier Structure does away with a separate class of officers, implying more
meritocrac advance through the ranks. Choosing this structure implies a more
egalitarian society.

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 Rank and duty

2-Tier Structure 1-Tier Structure

Descripon
Rank Rank
Recruit Recruit Straight out of basic training, ground level
dues.

Corporal Specialist 2nd class Has a few years’ experience, picking up a

Enlisted personnel

specialism or commanding small teams.

Sergeant Specialist 1st class Experienced, has leadership, training, or

specialised dues.

Chief N/a Enlisted personnel with significant logiscal

responsibilies, and more experience than
many officers.

Ensign N/a Junior commissioned officer, highly trained

but with lile field experience.

Lieutenant Lieutenant Has a sizeable command or responsibility,

Commissioned officer

such as a bridge officer or starfighter pilot.

Lieutenant- Lieutenant- In charge of a frigate or a department on a

Commander Commander large baleship.

Commander Commander In charge of a significant asset and crew

complement, like a baleship.

Admiral Admiral Has authority over the whole fleet.

Fleet
Setup acon: Choose one of the rank structures to use for your game, and talk
about the implicaons your choice has about societal straficaon

This would be a great me to understand the civilian power structures present
in the game seng too. What does your civilian authority look like, and how
does it interface with the military?

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The Fleet

Chain of command
To go with the ranks you’ll need a chain of command so you know which
characters have direct authority over each other, who non-military characters
might want to find if they’re trying to talk to people who can make important
decisions, and where it might be valuable to add NPCs.

Here’s a simplified chain of command designed to foster play:

Fleet Command

Fleet Intelligence Ship Command Other ships

Ship Operaons Ship Marines Ship flight staff

Navigaon
Comms
Sensors
Weapons
Medical
Supply
Engineering

Fleet Command
The people who determine the strategy of the enre fleet. This could be a
complex hierarchy of balegroup commanders and admirals, or a single ship’s
captain promoted unexpectedly to Admiral of the Fleet and making decisions
that affect the whole human race.

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 Rank and duty

Fleet Intelligence
Responsible for idenfying and gathering informaon on threats both inside
and outside the fleet. An intelligence operave may be staoned on a ship, but
they report directly to Fleet Command.

Ship Command
Each ship has a single commander, supported by an execuve officer, who is
responsible for ensuring that everything that happens aboard the ship
contributes to Fleet Command’s strategy. What they say, goes.

Ship Operaons
The majority of a ship’s crew will work in one of its operaonal departments,
serving as specialists that keep the ship running and allow it to carry out its
orders.

! Navigaon – plong courses, calculang FTL jumps, and pilong the ship.
! Comms – communicang with the fleet and anyone else you meet.
! Sensors – observing beyond the ship and reporng back on what’s out there.
! Weapons – protecng the ship from external threats using the onboard

Fleet
defences.
! Medical – treang illness and injury to keep the crew fit for duty.
! Supply – ensuring there is enough fuel, food and ammunion for the ship to run.
! Engineering – maintaining and repairing the ship.

Ship Marines
Troops staoned aboard the ship to maintain order, guard areas with restricted
access, and repel boarders or take offensive acon during combat.

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The Fleet

Ship flight staff

A semi-autonomous group aboard, the flight staff have no role in the operaons
of the ship but are responsible for maintaining and pilong the nimble
starfighters that defend larger vessels in ship to ship combat. They are only
found aboard larger ships that have the hangar space to support fighters.

Setup acon: Decide if there are any changes you want to make to this chain of
command for your game, and think about which departments you might want
your PCs to be from.

This would be a good me to consider what facons exist that can interact and
come into conflict with the military, or that exist within the military itself.

Military ships
The ship departments in the chain of command are repeated as many mes as
there are military ships in the fleet, on different scales depending on the classes of
ship. For simplicity’s sake, assume there are three primary classes of military ship.

Baleships
The largest, most imposing, most iconic class of military ship, a baleship
dominates every space combat it takes part in. Each baleship is heavily armed
and armoured, and acts as a staging plaorm for one or more wings of
starfighters within its hangar bays. It is crewed by hundreds of personnel
spanning all ranks and departments. Baleships are resource-hungry, and
Shortages can seriously impact how they run.

Having only one baleship in your game will make it the central pillar of the
military in the fleet and a good place to base the majority of the PCs. Having
two or three could introduce a level of polics to the military game as mulple
commanders vie for power and control.

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 Rank and duty

Frigates
Frigates come in many sizes and configuraons to support the fleet in a variety
of capacies. Gunships bristling with armaments might pack enough of a punch
to take down baleships despite their smaller size, while supply cra could carry
or harvest crical resources needed on a long deployment. Crew sizes could be
anything from 20 to 200, and larger frigates might support a starfighter wing.

Having a lot of frigates will make your fleet feel very militarized – well-
supported, but also closely observed and perhaps controlled – whereas having
very few will mean your baleship(s) are reliant on the cooperaon of the
civilian vessels.

Starfighters
The smallest and most manoeuvrable ship class is perhaps the most
romancized of the fleet. Crewed by a sole pilot or a pilot and gunner,
starfighters dock within other ships and are launched during bale to harry
enemy targets and engage enemy fighters in dramac dogfights.

If you want the risk of being grounded because of damage sustained to be a

factor of the game for anyone in the pilot role, set a small, finite number of
starfighters and keep track of when they’re damaged or destroyed.

Fleet
Setup acon: Decide how many baleships you want in your game and what
they’re called, roughly what proporon of frigates to civilian vessels your fleet
has, and how many starfighters your pilots have access to.

Get an idea of what the civilian element of your fleet looks like, too: an
approximate number of ships and souls might be useful, as could idenfying
and naming a few vessels of strategic significance.

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The Fleet

Making characters
It’s me to work out where your characters fit in with the structure you’ve
designed. As well as choosing names, playbooks, and moves, military characters
should decide on their rank, department, and which ship they’re staoned on.

If you want to play a character with a lot of authority to direct the overall path
of play but who’ll get blamed when things go wrong, choose a high rank. If you
want to play a character who doesn’t have control of their own desny, bucking
against bad orders or trying to weigh up the morality of their instrucons, play a
low rank. And if you want a lile of both, pick something in the middle.

It’s a good idea to cluster your characters on just one or two ships; but try to
spread the PCs out across mulple branches to give you a bigger picture of the
fleet as a whole and give each player more freedom to do different things, to
act independently, and potenally bring in inter-branch polics. Having a couple
of characters close together can cause interesng fricon, but too many might
get repeve. Avoid the lure of playing the bridge officers of a single ship, as
you’ll find that acon scenes will oen be reduced to everyone doing what one
person says.

Build shared backstories and strong relaonships that cross branch and rank
lines and extend beyond the military. Who have you been posted with before?
Who do you know for personal rather than military reasons? The efficient
operaon of the military depends on strict adherence to the chain of command,
but a good story thrives on conflicted loyales, unofficial back channels, and the
impropriety when you meet up to drink with the wrong people.

Decide your reputaon with your immediate superiors and those who report
directly to you. Are you a hero who always keeps their people safe? Are you a
fool who puts the safety of their people above the survival of the fleet? Are you
both at once?

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 Rank and duty

Setup acon: Each player chooses their name, rank, department, ship, playbook
and moves. Set up relaonships in the group, and decide on each PC’s
reputaon with the people they command and report to.

Adding NPCs
As the last thing to do before the game starts, it’s worth populang a few key
NPCs who will reinforce the structure of the military, create fricon in play, and
give the GM a mechanism to bring direcon and consequences to the ficon. If
you created NPCs while seng up the relaonships, reuse them now wherever
makes sense – the best NPCs exist in a triangle between two PCs, ideally with
each of them wanng something different from that NPC.

If the posion isn’t occupied, create an Admiral of the Fleet to give your military
characters some united direcon. Beware making this character too effecve, too
likeable, or too long-lived, or they’ll act as a stabilizing force in a game that thrives
on chaos and gets its best moments when things spiral out of control. Look for ways
to bring some instability to them, and ensure that at least one facon has a reason
to want them gone.

If there are any le unassigned, create a Commander for each baleship so
everyone knows who’s responsible for making decisions minute to minute, and

Fleet
to ensure all the actors in the polical game are fleshed out if you have mulple
influenal ships. Give them bold personalies and clear movaons. Losing a
ship’s commander is a big deal, so give them plenty of connecons to the PCs to
ensure their loss is felt if something does go wrong.

If you want to play a tense game of secrets and subterfuge, consider adding a
Director of Intelligence to act as an omnipresent threat to the guilty, and
anyone they don’t like.

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The Fleet

If you want to play heavily on material scarcity, give it a human face by creang
a Quartermaster who’s responsible for keeping everyone supplied with the
equipment and materials to do their jobs.

If you plan to play a lot of ship bales or sabotage, a Chief Engineer is useful to
reflect the damage sustained and the consequences of that to the fleet back to
the players. Likewise if the characters you have in play suggest the game will
contain a lot of hand-to-hand combat, a Chief Medical Officer to patch the PCs
up and order them to rest will come in handy.

Work out who each PC’s direct superior is and how they get on. Is each
character’s boss tyrannical, egoscal, pey, seemingly perfect? What would
create a good contrast with the PC? Similarly, get a picture of the people under
each PC’s command – not necessarily all of them, but a few key personalies:
perhaps gung-ho, recalcitrant, argumentave, or far too green.

Setup acon: Fill out the game’s cast with NPCs that are relevant to the type of
game the players want.

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 Rank and duty

Creang play
Using military structures during play is all about following or undercung the
expectaons of a rigid hierarchy in a way that creates narrave texture.
Somemes it’s great to see an order disseminated through the ranks, followed
effecvely, and have the desired effect; and you can assume that that’s what’s
going on most of the me in the background. But when it’s in the spotlight, it’s
oen going to be much more interesng to see that process go wrong.

The order itself, its transmission through the ranks, and its eventual execuon
are all potenal points of failure; and whether the problem is caused by malice,
incompetence, selfishness, or simple bad luck, it’s going to lead to entertaining
scenes and juicy consequences. This is what will be most sasfying to get on
screen in your game, and you can use these suggesons to help you bring these
problems into your story.

High-ranking characters
Whether as PC officer or as the GM playing an NPC, look for ways to make your
influence on the course of events provide entertainment for everyone involved.
Drive the people you have authority over towards the acon, to become heroes
or face tragedy.

Fleet
Play into the reputaon you want your character to have in the type of orders
you give your subordinates – big and sweeping, or pey and micromanaging.

Find ways to disagree with other high-ranking characters, especially if you’re on

equal foong, and let everyone else feel the ripples of the trouble at the top.

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The Fleet

Look for ways to order your subordinates to do things they don’t want to. Here
are some great orders you should consider – and that can be used as Moves
with NPCs:

! Demand that they compromise their morals.

! Force them to risk exposing their secrets.
! Give them orders based on incomplete informaon.
! Put them at odds with the people they care about.
! Send them on a hopelessly dangerous mission.

Leave your subordinates space to do their own thing or interpret your orders in
broad ways so you aren’t dictang how any other PCs spend all their on-screen
me.

Low-ranking characters
You’re the ones who end up actually execung every order, so take advantage
of your ability to direct play by doing things and providing informaon that will
lead the fleet into interesng situaons. Again, this works for PC soldiers and
NPCs alike.

Make your superiors look good or bad by comming to a challenge or giving a

lacklustre performance, and make sure they understand that you have the
power to do that.

Reinforce the authority of your superiors by salung and addressing them

formally, or undercut them by doing that to their face and mocking them
behind their backs.

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 Rank and duty

Look for ways to respond to orders you don’t like in ways that create play –
these can also be used as Moves for NPCs:
! Complain loudly about your orders.
! Frak up your orders, in a way that’s going to cause problems later.
! Say you’ll follow orders when your superior is in the room, but don’t.
! Outright refuse to follow orders, exposing your superiors but also opening
yourself up to disciplinary acon.

Take advantage of your relave anonymity to do things that others might be too
high-profile to get away with, from malicious sabotage to a lile harmless
bootlegging.

Civilian characters
You exist outside the chain of command, so have fun with it!
! Point out that you can’t be ordered around.
! Force military characters to use physical force and prove themselves tyrants
if they want to impose their decisions on you.
! Misunderstand the chain of command and ask the wrong people for things.
! Intenonally subvert the chain of command and find back routes to get what

Fleet
you need.
! Empower those at the boom of the rank hierarchy and upset the system.

Play acon: Look for opportunies to use the unique ways your character
interfaces with the hierarchy of rank to create fricon and propel the story
forward.

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The Fleet

Damage
Somemes (ok, oen) characters in Last Fleet will get injured, or their ships will
sustain damage. Here is some specific guidance on how to handle that mechanically.

As explained in the secon on Space Bales (page 191–198), we do not track

the progress of big bales in great detail. There’s shots being fired, explosions
going off. Presumably individually ships are damaged or destroyed. But we
don’t worry about tracking this – on either side – unl a PC becomes involved,
and then we focus on the outcomes of their acons.

Furthermore, there are no stats or other numbers in Last Fleet to represent

how much damage a given weapon does, or how much damage a given person
or ship can sustain. Instead, it’s up to the group (oen led by the GM) to decide
how damaging a given thing might be, given the ficonal situaon that’s been
described. The rest of this secon describes how you go about doing that. I’ve
given examples, but it’s up to you to decide how much damage a given hazard is
potenally going to cause, in your game.

How to assess damage

Damage to human ships is handled differently depending on whether the source
of the damage is a PC or not, and whether the target is a PC or not. But either
way the steps you go through are essenally the same:
1 Decide whether this aack or hazard could possibly cause noteworthy
damage to the target. If someone gets pushed roughly, or a fighter gets hit
with a cricket bat, that’s not really going to do any serious damage, so we
just connue to play out the situaon without any mechanical effect
happening.
2 If it could, decide whether any PC is in a posion to stop it or make it
happen, as appropriate. Could they Engage In Bale with the aacker?

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 Damage

Could they Shake Off the threat? If so, use that Move and apply the
consequences of the roll.
3 If nobody could stop it, or if they failed a roll and the GM decides that their
Move should be to apply the full effects of the damage, then consider what
level of damage is appropriate and apply it. This will be very different
depending on the type of target, as explained in the table on the next page.
Mostly use the middle column, but for more extreme situaons the le-hand
and right-hand columns may be appropriate.
As shown in the table, the results of damage to a player character can be any
of: nothing happens; apply some Pressure; roll to Weather Serious Harm; they
die. Weather Serious Harm is for serious, potenally debilitang wounds, or
damage that could stop specific systems from working. Pressure is for harm that
falls below those thresholds, but would sll make life harder for the character.
For suggesons for damage to a player character’s ship, see the fleet damage
list on page 189–190.

For NPCs, we really don’t care all that much about the specifics of any injuries,
and we don’t track Pressure. So for them, if they’re harmed, we prey much
either ignore it unless out of acon or dead. You can always have them react to
minor harm by losing control or doing something risky that they then need

Fleet
rescuing from; and Doom Clocks are a nice opon for pung an NPC’s life at
immediate risk without killing them straight away.

For damage to the wider fleet, Arion is used for general damage that might
damage or destroy individual small ships, or injure or kill individual NPCs, but
without any important ship, resource or named character being destroyed.
When a specific important ship, resource or character is at stake, or when
Arion reaches maximum, then aacks might instead result in specific systems
being taken out of acon, Shortage(s) and/or NPCs being killed.

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The Fleet

Type of target Noteworthy damage, Serious damage, but Lethal/terrible

but not serious not certain to be lethal damage
Individual human Examples: A flesh Examples: Solid hit Examples: Trapped on
(PC). wound or punch in from a gun. Caught in a ship that’s destroyed
the face. an explosion. by a nuke. Flushed out
Effect: Mark Pressure. Effect: Roll to Weather of an airlock.
Serious Harm. Effect: You die.
Non-player Examples are the same as for PCs above.
character
Ignore it, or have They are dead or They die.
them lose control/do helpless and will die if
something risky. nobody intervenes.
Fighter or other Examples: Glancing Examples: Direct hit Examples: Crashing
small ship hit from a fighter. from another fighter. into a star. Hit by a
Passing through a Crash landing on a nuke.
corrosive atmosphere. planetoid. Effect: Ship is
Effect: Apply Effect: Apply “serious destroyed. PCs who
“noteworthy, not damage” to could eject/evacuate
serious” harm to pilot/crew. might roll to Shake
pilot/crew. Off.
Group of fighters Examples: None. Examples: Concerted Examples: Concerted
Although fighters are aack from a group of aack from a much
armoured, we only fighters, a missile larger group of
note damage to strike, etc. enemy fighters; a
groups where it’s Effect: Mark Arion. volley of missiles.
serious. A few ships are Effect: Mark Arion
damaged or and/or create a
destroyed, individual Shortage: fighters.
NPC pilots might be The fighters are
harmed. destroyed or crippled.
Large military ship Examples: They’re Examples: Direct hit Examples: The enre
(baleship, strafed by fighters or from a missile. enemy fleet is
frigate) ordnance. An Sustained fire from a bearing down,
explosion somewhere group of fighters. weapons are offline
non-crical. Kamikaze aack by a and the fighters
Effect: Mark Arion. fighter. defending it have
Effect: Apply an been destroyed or
appropriate effect to routed.
the ship. E.g. weapons Effect: The ship is
offline, FTL drive destroyed. NPC(s)
malfunconing. might be killed, and
Shortage(s) might
apply.

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 Damage

Type of target Noteworthy damage, Serious damage, but Lethal/terrible

but not serious not certain to be lethal damage
Large civilian ship Examples: N/A. Examples: They’re hit Examples: Direct hit
Civilian ships are by a fighter. They pass from a missile.
assumed to be through the corrosive Sustained fighter fire.
unarmoured. Any atmosphere of a Effect: The ship is
notable damage to a planetoid. destroyed. If it’s an
them is serious. Effect: Mark Arion important ship,
and the ship may Shortage(s) might
suffer specific apply. Otherwise,
damage: hull breach, Mark Arion.
dead in the water, etc.

Damage to ship systems

Where the table calls for a specific effect or damage to a ship, you can use the
list below for inspiraon. Opons for systems being taken out of acon could
include:

! Propulsion (dead in the water).

! FTL (can’t jump).
! Sensors (can’t effecvely navigate or land without rolling to Shake Off).
! Weapons (can’t aack).
! Life support/hull breach (limited me for crew survival, consider using a
Doom Clock).

Fleet
! Cargo is damaged, creang a new Shortage (e.g. water, fuel, ammunion, food).
! Crew are injured or killed (say who dies or say their condion is unstable,
see below).
! Ship destroyed. Boom!

Choose something that will be directly relevant to the current situaon if

possible, unless pacing suggests this is a bad idea (e.g. the scene is dragging and
you don’t want to introduce a new obstacle to finishing it). For PC fighters and
other important ships, you’ll want to record the damage so it can be repaired in

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The Fleet

future. For less important ships, you can probably forget about it aer the
current scene: assume it gets taken care of in the background.

When a ship takes serious damage short of being destroyed, the GM may also
declare that the damage is unstable, either in addion to or instead of one of
the effects listed above. Unstable damage means a system is geng worse,
and/or may inflict damage on other parts of the ship (perhaps because it is on
fire, or experiencing power surges, or has a leak). You can then make the
damage worse when a GM Move is called for, or you could aach a Doom Clock
to it instead, if you like. All of this creates me pressure, and will cause
engineers to run around trying to fix the problem in a most amusing way.

For example: They missed the main baery, but they’ve holed the water
tanks – water is venng into space! There’s no damage for now but the
situaon is unstable, if you don’t fix it you could lose all your water.

In addion to the direct mechanical consequence of damage to ships, consider

whether Marking Arion (for ships that are important, but not vital) or
changing Momentum (for major fleet assets) might be appropriate.

Damage to the enemy

With damage to the enemy, we care even less about the specifics than we do
with NPCs. The enemy’s fighters and warriors can be assumed to be more-or-
less endless and interchangeable, and their big ships and leaders untouchable,
unless a PC gets involved. If they do, refer to the relevant Move.

When individual enemies suffer harm as a result of a player’s Move, e.g.

Engage In Bale, they are destroyed. For the bigger ships, even individual parts
of the ship (their main baery, say) count as a tough target in themselves.
When such a target takes damage, it’s destroyed but the ship it’s a part of is
otherwise unharmed.

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 Running big battles

Death
Somemes things escalate in such a way that a PC’s life is on the line. When this
happens, it’s important to make it clear what’s at stake before it reaches that
point. If things go badly, and someone dies, anyone with a Relaonship with that
character immediately Marks Pressure equal to the Relaonship’s level. I like to
ask everyone else whether they care about the character’s death. Anyone who
does must Mark Pressure.

You can also apply this approach to NPCs the players care about. Signal What’s
Coming so that they can struggle to save the beloved character. For more bit
part NPCs, feel free to just hose them when a GM Move is called for.

Running big battles

Tracking the flow of the bale

When an enemy fleet jumps in and starts launching fighters, you’ve got a
sprawling situaon to manage. Dozens of fighters join the bale, supported by
a hail of ordnance from the bigger ships. Civilian ships try to stay out of danger.
Command staff bark orders while pilots try to blast the enemy out of the sky.
It’s a lot to deal with. So… don’t.

Fleet
Instead of trying to track all of this stuff, Last Fleet abstracts most of it away into
a simple Doom Clock-based mechanic for monitoring the overall flow of the
bale. You can then focus the spotlight on the individual acons of the player
characters and make them seem meaningful and important.

At the start of any large bale where there are lots of NPCs and/or ships
involved, start by deciding who is going to win. That might seem
counterintuive – aren’t we playing to find out who wins? Well, no, we aren’t.
In most cases, one side or the other will have numerical superiority. So, right at
the start of the bale there’s usually one side who will win unless something

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The Fleet

unexpected happens. So, decide who that is. And in Last Fleet, that’s nearly
always the enemy, because the human race is a rag-tag fleet on the run aer
their whole civilizaon was destroyed, while their enemy is well-organized and
well-supplied and just one part of a much bigger fleet.

We then create a bale Doom Clock. Every me a significant chunk of acon
happens in the part of the bale we’re focusing on, we assume that the rest of
the bale didn’t just stop, but was carrying on in the background, and we Mark
a Segment of the Doom Clock. Remember, Clocks have four Segments, so it
won’t take long to fill up.

If, as is usually the case, the human fleet is on the losing side, every me that a
Segment is filled on your bale Doom Clock, Mark one Arion. When the Doom
Clock is full, erase all the marks on the Doom Clock and start again, but this me
Marking two Arion per Segment. The longer the human fleet takes to achieve
their objecves and get out of there, the worse it’s going to get for them.

When the humans are on the winning side, you probably don’t need to track
the overall progress of the bale. You might not need to play through the bale
at all! Consider just narrang what happens, giving each character a chance to
describe their role without rolling any dice. But other mes, you’ll be interested
in some parcular objecve that is separate from winning the bale. In that
case, focus in on the acons that maer to that objecve, and don’t worry
about what is happening in the wider sweep of the bale. But be ready to start
a Doom Clock if me is a factor, or if the bale turns against the human fleet.

You can also create Doom Clocks for other things of course – if the enemy
boards the capital ship, you could create one to determine when they make it
to the command centre and kill all the NPC commanders, for instance. Anything
that creates a sense of pressure for the players to take acon, is generally a
good thing.

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 Running big battles

Focus on the acon

You do, of course, describe what’s happening in the bale at a high level. Each
me you Mark the Doom Clock, tell the players that the enemy is launching
fighters, now they’re engaged in dog-fights, now they’re launching missiles, that
kind of thing. Imagine that we’re geng occasional camera shots of the acon,
with fighters whizzing by and shrapnel flying. This helps create a sense of the bale
and also gives Taccians something to say when they want to make their Move.

However, while this abstracted acon is going on, the GM should introduce
interesng things for individual PCs – especially pilots – to worry about. Stuff
like “there’s a small group of enemy fighters headed straight towards the fuel
liner” and “there’s this one weird ship headed towards the Agamemnon, much
bigger than the rest”. The players may take acon to tackle those threats. If
they don’t, or if they fail, drive the consequences home. The fuel liner is
destroyed – now there’s a Shortage of fuel. The weird ship docks with
Agamemnon, and enemy warriors pour onto the ship.

Fleet

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The Fleet

Equally, rather than pung something big at stake, you can just describe the
most immediate enemy that player soldiers are faced with, let them roll to
Engage In Bale. A 6 means they get into trouble, and let the consequences
flow from there. In that case, you’re pung the fate of the individual pilots in
the crosshairs, and the drama of the bale will be about whether they get back
in me to jump away with the rest of the fleet.

Finally, somemes the players will create this stuff for you by pro-acvely going
aer the enemy. Perhaps they decide they’re going to jump in and aempt to
land a ship on the enemy basestar. That’s plenty interesng by itself; just tell
them what’s standing in their way and let the Moves flow.

How the bale ends

Space bales nearly always end with one side jumping away to safety. That
means you engage your FTL drives or go into hyperspace or whatever your
preferred SF super-fast transportaon method is, and (effecvely) teleport away
from the balefield. For the enemy fleet, it’s up to the GM to decide when they
jump – and it’s a GM Move, of course. For the human fleet, it’s up to whoever is
in the command centre to decide when to jump. This is a great decision for PC
commanders to take. If it’s NPCs, you can use the bale Doom Clock and say
“aer x segments are filled in, the fleet is going to jump, whether you’re back or
not”, or you can have fun talking over the comm as your NPC, barking orders to
return immediately, Signalling that they’ll jump soon.

The decision to jump is constrained by the me taken to spool up the jump
drive, or calculate the coordinates, or whatever your preferred SF process for
geng ready to jump is. It’s also constrained by the difficulty of jumping when
you’re directly engaged in combat. The consequences of this are:

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 Running big battles

! You can’t jump away from bale straight away, there’s always a period of
me when you have to hold the enemy at bay. It’s up to the GM to say how
long this is. If you weren’t prepared for the aack, but your jump drives are
intact, this is usually the me it takes to fill a bale Doom Clock.
! If you jump away when the fleet is acvely engaged in combat, you may
want to make the ranking leader roll to Shake Off the aack, with the risk of
jumping somewhere dangerous, or taking some damage before you leave, or
losing part of the fleet, or bringing some aackers with you, or similar.
Similarly, if one part of the fleet are engaged in combat, they might need to
roll to Shake Off in order to get back in me for the jump.

Another possible (though rare) way to end a bale is for one side to endure
such serious losses that they no longer have any prospect of victory. This should
only happen if the losses are seriously decisive, like if one side’s main baleship
is disabled or destroyed. If that happens to the enemy fleet, we fade to black on
images of the remaining fighters being mopped up and the crew celebrang.
There’s probably a change in Momentum. If it happens to the human fleet, well
– that’s a really big deal. They’re going to jump away into a crisis situaon,
desperately trying to restore bale capability, or if they can’t jump away, then
we move to a new and even worse situaon – fighng off boarding pares, or

Fleet
surrendering and living under occupaon. That might mean the game ends on a
rather bleak note, or enters a new phase.

195
The Fleet

Can’t we turn the de of the bale?

No. Well… probably not. Individual acons can’t stem the de of overwhelming
numerical advantage. Even the best pilot can only destroy so many enemy
fighters. The Taccian Moves allow the players to hold back the progress of the
bale Clock, but that’s really just damage limitaon.

However.

Somemes there’s a big acon that can make a difference. When someone
pilots a stealth ship to land a nuke on board the enemy mothership… if that
comes off, the de of the bale is shied. Perhaps even the de of the war. So,
when an acon has consequences way beyond the normal business of trading
fire, consider whether the bale’s winning side has changed. And in that case,
you may also wish to consider a change in Momentum.

What about the big guns?

While the fighters are whizzing around in space doing their thing, the bigger
ships of the fleet are hammering away with turret-mounted cannons, waves of
missiles and so on. For the most part, that’s just part of the background bale
that’s abstracted away by the bale Doom Clock. These weapons are so huge
and imprecise, and the distances so vast, that it’s not possible to achieve
focused taccal objecves using them. You can’t, say, Engage In Bale by using
the big guns to shoot down enemy fighters: between squeezing the trigger and
the shell exploding, the fighters have moved on, and the risk of hing your own
ships is very high.

That’s not to say that they’re irrelevant to the bale. Fighters can be driven
towards a wall of ordnance fire. A wing of fighters led by a player character pilot
could clear a hole through the screen of enemy ships, allowing the big guns to
land a major blow on the mothership. In other words, they’re part of the

196
 Running big battles

ficonal context for the acons taken by the pilots. They can, in some contexts,
be used to Support a pilot’s acons – though for the same reasons you can’t
generally use them to Engage In Bale, it’s oen impossible to use them this
way too – you’d risk blowing your own ships out of the sky.

What about people who aren’t soldiers?

Ok, a lile bit of honesty here. When there’s a big bale on, the fighter pilots
and/or marines are going to be in the spotlight. There’s some ps here for how
to ensure that other characters aren’t sing there twiddling their thumbs
completely, but the reality is that, like any scene, not every character is going to
be on focus. So the upshot of all that is, space bales shouldn’t be all that
frequent, and shouldn’t go on all that long, if you want the rest of your group to
be engaged. For smaller bales, simply play through them swily in a series of
punchy Moves, and then move on to the next scene. Of course, if it happens
that all your player characters are soldiers, and if they seem to enjoy it, knock
yourself out and run some really in-depth bales.

With that in mind, here’s some things you can do to make things interesng for
the other characters, parcularly in larger bales:

! For Taccians, they have access to their Role Move, which enables them to

Fleet
provide Support and other effects, even when they can’t directly do
anything to influence the events of the bale. They may somemes lend
Support by blasng away with the weapon baeries on board the big ship,
and by ordering in help from NPC fighters. And they may be the one taking
the decision when to jump the fleet, which can be a fun kind of tense. When
that happens, remember they need to roll to Shake Off where appropriate.

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The Fleet

! For Engineers, there’s a lot of fun to be had to francally get damaged ships
back in the air or repair or contain damage to the big ship. When someone
has really come in hot, their engines on fire or whatever, things can get even
more interesng, with the engineering crew baling to prevent an explosion
or migate collateral damage. Even when a fighter is damaged and stranded,
Engineers can have fun trying to provide advice over the radio.
! It’s civilians who are least engaged when there’s a bale. The fact is, there’s
relavely lile that they can do, short of deploying their Playbook Moves in
invenve ways. One way to keep them engaged is to cut back and forth
between balefield acon and engaging social or other non-combat scenes
happening contemporaneously. Another possibility is to put them in harm’s
way – damage to their ship or boarding pares or whatnot can draw them
into combat whether they like it or not. Finally, the Watch Helplessly Move
enables them to cut away to them simply watching what’s going on from
wherever they are. What are they thinking? Who are they with? What do
they talk about as they watch their lives hanging in the balance? As well as
the mechanical benefit of Watch Helplessly, there are good opportunies
here for Reaching Out.

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The Commonwealth
and the Corax
Setting overview
Human civilizaon is united under the Interplanetary Commonwealth, which
consists of a small number of semi-independent planets united under a loose
federaon. The Commonwealth has been around for about a century, and
memories are sll fresh of the me before when the planets warred and
bickered amongst themselves. Old resentments and rivalries sll smoulder
beneath the surface. Over the same me period, the Commonwealth expanded
from a trading associaon to become increasingly like a federal government.

That was the situaon before the Corax aacked. The planets were devastated
and are now blanketed with alien flora, uerly inhospitable to human life. The
Commonwealth and the planetary governments were destroyed. Who should
be in charge in these circumstances is unclear.

The main planets of the Commonwealth are:

! Ninmahon, a world of bustling metropolises and spreading agricultural
hinterlands. Its people (Ninmanese) tend to be educated and wealthy compared
to others. The polical hub of the Commonwealth and resented for it.
Setting
! Ishkuria, a cold and bleak planet rich in minerals and supplier of many of the
Commonwealth’s commodies. Its people (Ishkurians) have a proud maral and
hunng heritage. Ishkuria tends to be looked down on by the other planets.
! Nergalos, a verdant planet with vast oceans. Its people (Nergalese) are
deeply religious but also renowned for mercanle cunning; they are also
known for their pilots and navigators.

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The Fleet

Factions

The Red Temple

The Red Temple were the main religion in the Commonwealth. Most people went
along with their pracces in a fairly uncommied way, but there were always a
minority who were devoted and faithful. The Temple believe that humanity will
rise to greatness in the fires of a catastrophe called “the Remaking”. Many of
them believe the Corax incursion is the Remaking, and that confronng it head-on
will lead to a greater future. Some are trying to exacerbate the crisis, believing
that the more intense the catastrophe, the greater the benefit to humanity.

Key NPCs:
! Chaplain Eduardo Chun, once a quiet meditave man mainly concerned to
look aer the faithful, has begun to give more fiery sermons. He perceives
the Remaking is at hand. Whose ear does he have?
! Caitriona “Phantom” Ibarra, a fighter jock through and through. She’s
fiercely commied to the war, believes in taking the bale to the enemy and
a devotee of a more fringe element of the Red Temple. Who likes to blow off
steam with her?

Moves:
! Demand greater zeal and aggression.
! Publicly denounce cowardice or retreat to safety.
! Recruit someone to the Temple.
! Hasten the Remaking through sabotage or collaboraon.

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 Factions

Unity
Unity are a polical party dedicated to a more egalitarian order, parcularly
popular on Ishkuria. They have a paramilitary wing called The Unifiers, though
they deny any connecon with them. Unity are opposed to the Commonwealth
polical order, but even more fiercely opposed to military rule. They want to
stop the military taking control of the fleet.

Key NPCs:
! Julian Volkov, a capable organizer (can be a military logiscian or a polical
adviser, as needed) who can get shit done. He’s earnest, principled, and a
card-carrying member of Unity. Who relies heavily on Julian to run things for
them?
! Claudia Scala, a rabble-rousing union leader. Publicly, she is ferociously
dedicated to protecng the rights, freedoms, and democrac system of the
Commonwealth against military manoeuvring. Privately she’s looking for
opportunies to remake the system, abolishing the exisng hierarchy. Who
has been at loggerheads with Claudia?

Moves:
! Strike a piously liberal or pro-democrac stance.
! Undermine authority.
! Culvate like-minded individuals.
! Iniate protests or civil disobedience. Setting
! Unifier acon: kidnap, assassinate, bomb.

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The COmmonwealth and the Corax

The Nexus
The Nexus is a network of criminals and black marketeers. Though much of the
network was destroyed in the aacks, there are cells operang in the fleet. Of
course, you can’t make a profit if there is no fleet, and they favour pragmasm
and polical stability over conflict.

Key NPCs:
! Morgan Kinnard, a junior officer fulfilling a menial yet crucial role, who is
secretly running a black-market operaon from their work staon, as part of
the Nexus. Tell the group that Morgan is superb at logiscs and
administraon, and is a secret black marketeer. Who has them as a
subordinate?
! Ruth Foster, an engineer who has goen addicted to narcocs supplied by
the Nexus. In exchange for connued supply, she is stealing stuff from the
fleet. Who has noced Ruth’s shoddy work recently?

Moves:
! Stockpile, restrict, distribute or move resources, legally or illegally.
! Find something not normally available.
! Demand a quid pro quo.
! Enforce their rules, or take revenge.

202
 Ships

Ships

Warships
Agamemnon is a massive baleship with three gun baeries and four fighter
launch bays, plus space for a division of marines. Agamemnon has been fighng a
hit-and-run war against the Corax and has only now encountered the civilian
fleet. The ship is damaged and low on fuel, and must now decide what to do next.

Hecate is a smaller frigate, armed with a single gun baery and hosng a dozen
fighters. Hecate is also home to what remains of the Commonwealth
Government. In a toe-to-toe bale with Agamemnon she wouldn’t stand a
chance, but could perhaps hold the capital ship off for a me. Hecate has been
protecng the civilian fleet, but sorely needs the help of Agamemnon for long-
term survival.

Key NPCs:
! Admiral Bachmann, the commander of Agamemnon. A hard-headed
taccian who doesn’t trust the green president on board Hecate. Who has
suffered because of her uncompromising approach to the war?
! President Victor Pereira, a war hero and the only surviving member of the
Commonwealth Government. Who does Pereira go to for advice?

Setting

203
The COmmonwealth and the Corax

Aphrodite
Aphrodite is a research ship that has been turned over to hydroponics and fleet
supplies. The ship is run by a scienst council who control producon of food
for the fleet with spreadsheets and rotas, and are trying to push their
bureaucrac methods onto the rest of the fleet. They’re also obsessed with
trying to beer understand the enemy, and have high-security laboratories
experimenng on samples and/or prisoners. There’s also a large number of lay
staff on board, seconded over to boost producvity.

The ship has three glass hydroponics bays sing around a central engineering core,
with laboratories and observatories in the belly of the ship. Its two exploratory
vessels are used as shules to ferry food and other supplies around the fleet. They
have scoops and drills for harvesng samples from asteroids, gas giants and the like,
though these aren’t suitable for gathering large quanes of material.

Moves:
! An experiment goes wrong or escapes.
! Something is smuggled in or out.
! The sciensts meddle in another ship’s affairs.
! The sciensts discover a secret.

Hephaestus
Hephaestus is a mining ship, equipped with dozens of small pods for harvesng
minerals from asteroids. It has equipment for processing ore into refined
materials. The ship is rammed with Ishkurian refugees that it rescued during the
exodus from the homeworlds, and would not be safe to commence mining
operaons on any scale unless they were moved out.

The workers on Hephaestus include a hard core of feisty unionists, and the chief
of mining operaons is Claudia Scala (see the Unity facon). They’ll be ready to

204
 The Corax

cause trouble should they suspect anyone of cung back on safety, workers
rights, or civil liberes. Equally, if brought on side, they could be very effecve
at organizing operaons.

Alexander
Alexander is a fuel ship. It has used up much of its reserves geng Hecate and
the fleet to where it is, but has enough to last a while. Supplying Agamemnon
would change that.

The Corax
Beneath the skin of our physical universe there is a realm that obeys enrely
different laws. The Tenebrium enables FTL travel and communicaon. But it is
also the origin of our enemy. The Corax is a vast senent network that lurks in
the Tenebrium, making sudden incursions into the physical universe to consume
informaon – the raw structure of biological life – by harvesng the DNA and
neural paerns of living things.

The physical manifestaon of the Corax appears to be analogous in structure to

earth fungus. Like fungus, it can appear in a range of forms. Spores dri across
space to seed themselves in a ships’ systems and wreak havoc. Enormous
filamentous structures surge out of ris to launch aack ships. Hulking Corax
warriors lead boarding pares and paralyse defenders. Most insidious of all,
cloned humans, controlled by mycelium networks, infiltrate the fleet. Setting

205
The COmmonwealth and the Corax

The Corax intelligence

Sciensts believe that the Corax is essenally one consciousness. The Corax is
capable of operang semi-independent instances of itself, like copies of a
computer programme, but these are not truly separate minds and are always
ulmately reabsorbed into the main Corax intelligence. It can also manifest
avatars. These seem like individual beings, some even seeming human, but (so
say the sciensts) they are in fact more like simulaons being controlled by the
central intelligence, and no more than puppets of the true Corax mind.
Regardless of the truth, it is unnerving to encounter one’s dead loved ones or
colleagues, large as life and possessing all their memories and emoons, and
urging surrender to the Corax.

Moves:
! Respond with alarming cunning or insight.
! Draw on knowledge and skills possessed by anyone it has consumed.
! Manifest an avatar.

The Corax fleet

Corax ships come in a range of sizes and configuraons. Unlike human ships,
they are rarely adapted for long-distance travel. They do not need to be: the
Corax is able to generate ris between the Tenebrium and physical space
through which it can extrude mycoc hubs from which the ships launch. No
maer where you are, the Corax can follow you.

Of course, these are usually not ships in the precise sense of the word.
Independently controlled and containing neither cargo nor crew, they are more
like drones.

The most common Corax “ship” is referred to as the Spore Pod, a fast aack
cra whose weapons bond to human systems and disable them, while

206
 The Corax

maintaining an airght membrane to preserve the organic life within. More

dreaded are the Assault Pods, tubular cra that dissolve the outside of a target
ship’s hull, form an airlock, and then release Corax warriors. A final danger are
the clouds of near-invisible spores that may infest ships’ systems without
anyone realizing. If le alone, they grow into larger systems that may send
signals into the Tenebrium to aract further Corax aacks, or spawn other
Corax organisms to cause trouble later on.

Custom move:
! When you Weather Serious Harm from a Spore Pod, on a 7–9 it has the
opon to immobilize your ship.

Moves:
! Open a ri and extrude mycoc hubs.
! Launch fighters.
! Disable a human ship or system without killing anyone.
! Land an assault pod.
! Infest a ship with spores.

Setting

207
The COmmonwealth and the Corax

Landing pares
Corax boarding pares are generally led by hulking Corax warriors. Slow but
hard to kill, they implacably advance through human ships, disabling the crew.
They eject projecles and clouds of spores which paralyse human targets or
shut down ships’ systems.

Once the Corax warriors have cleared the way, the Harvesters arrive. Slithering
things that pose no threat in themselves, they drag the paralysed vicms away,
to be returned to the hub for informaon extracon. Anyone who suffers such a
fate will have the informaonal content of both their body and mind absorbed
by one of the Corax’s extractor cauldrons. Their strengths, their knowledge and
understanding, are devoured and retained for later use. They may later return
as avatars: indisnguishable from who they used to be, but now working for the
Corax.

Custom moves:
! When you aack a Corax warrior with something less damaging than high
explosive or a chainsaw, it just keeps going.

! When you Weather Serious Harm from a Corax warrior, on a 7–9 it has the
opon to paralyse one of your limbs.

Moves:
! Paralyse someone or something.

! Advance silently and inevitably.

! Shrug off damage.

! Drag off vicms.

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 The Corax

Infiltrators
The Corax have numerous ways to infiltrate the fleet. The most basic is sporic
infestaon. The Corax have a range of spores that can inhabit the exterior of a
ship, the warmer regions around an engine, or that can live in a life-supported
area. If not discovered and removed, they grow. Once established, they can
develop into organisms that summon the Corax fleet from the Tenebrium,
inveigle themselves into ship’s systems and disable them, or spawn Corax
warriors or avatars.

Avatars are the most feared of all. They appear human. They may appear like a
specific human, and put on a perfect simulaon of that person’s personality and
memories. They are virtually indisnguishable from a real person. Once inside,
they may wait paently for months or years before moving to deal a devastang
blow from a posion of trust.

Custom move:
! When you Seek Out the truth about an avatar’s identy, no maer what you
roll, you can’t prove for certain that it isn’t the real deal.

Moves:
! Disable a ship’s operaons.
Setting
! Sabotage a mission.

! Feed informaon to the Corax.

! Assassinate someone.

! Tempt them into hesitaon or surrender.

209
210
Quick-start
scenario: cold war
The bale cruiser Agamemnon survived the inial assault on the Commonwealth
by pure luck: the ship was away on a deep space mission and returned to find the
cies had been scoured of life and the war was all but over. Since that me it’s
been waging a hit-and-run campaign against the Corax fleet, with no obvious
purpose besides revenge.

Two days ago, Agamemnon encountered a fleet of ships hiding out near a
concealed research staon. The ships are mostly civilian, but led and protected
by a smaller warship, Hecate. On board is the self-proclaimed President of the
Fleet, a war hero and previously Secretary of Labour, presumed to be the only
survivor of the Commonwealth government.

The situaon is precarious. Admiral Katerina Bachmann and President Victor

Pereira are at loggerheads and there is the possibility of intra-fleet hoslies.
Meanwhile, Agamemnon is short on fuel. And it is only a maer of me before
the Corax show up.

Quick start

211
Quick Start Scenarios

Setup
Use the Commonwealth and the Corax seng described above. It is full of
facons, NPCs, and story seeds that you can draw on as needed.

Skip the usual character creaon and world setup, and don’t use the
Momentum Move or the Sleeper Agent Move – the effects of these Moves are
baked into the starng setup and GM notes. (If you’re using this as a campaign
starter, use these Moves as normal aer that.)

I recommend using the usual session one starng quesons (see pages 86–87)
to get things off to a flying start, though there’s enough content in the seng
and this scenario that you should be able to generate plenty to occupy a one-
shot if you prefer to get into scenes faster than that.

Use the characters set out below. Have the players read out the Playbook text
as normal, plus the descripve informaon next to each character’s name. If
you have fewer than five players, use them in the order they’re listed (in other
words, first drop Chief Tomika, then Captain Vega, then Major Catan). GM: you
can and should use any skipped-over characters as NPCs.

As normal for a game starng in the aermath of a crisis, the characters start
with three Pressure Marked, and the fleet starts with Momentum –1. For a one-
shot using this scenario, Mark four Arion rather than the usual two
(represenng recent bale damage to the Agamemnon) and start a Doom Clock
with two Segments already filled in to represent the fuel Shortage.

212
 Player characters

Player Characters

Admiral Katerina Bachmann (Capricorn)

You are the ranking officer on board Agamemnon. You’ve been harrying the
Corax for weeks. Your ship has sustained bale damage and you’re low on fuel.
Now you’ve got this civilian fleet to worry about – and a novice President who
thinks he’s in charge.

Stats: Raw +0, Hard +1, Smooth +0, Warm –1, Sharp +0.

Moves: Zero Compromises, Thrives Under Pressure, Taccian.

Relaonships
! Pereira was a war hero in his day, but he hasn’t been in acve service for a
long while. You’re not parcularly impressed with his record as a
commander or as president, and you think he’s kind of so. Unbeknownst to
you, Pereira served under you in the Anathian war, and was part of the
assault on Thanol. During the assault, you ordered a bombardment of the
enemy, knowing that some of your own people would get hit. You’re
comfortable with that: it was a price worth paying to turn the de of the
bale and save lives.
! Major Catan seems intelligent and dedicated. Maybe they’ll help steer
Pereira to making the right decisions.
! Livia Vega is a brave and commied pilot, but needs to grow into her
Quick start

leadership role as Commander of the Air Group. She is prone to

inappropriate behaviour – grandstanding, bar brawls, fraternizaon with
junior officers. Firm discipline is what her people need and, you suspect,
what she needs too.

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Quick Start Scenarios

President Victor Pereira (Libra)

You are in control of Hecate and the civilian fleet. You are a former marine and
laerly commanded a small warship, but le the military long ago and took up
polics, inially as a union organizer but most recently as Secretary of Labour.
You’ve been thrust into the office of Presidency but now that you’re here,
you’re damned well going to get the job done. Mission number one is
protecng what’s le of the human race.

You have a former affiliaon with Unity (see “facons” on page 201). You have
de‑emphasized it as a liability since you became labour sec, but you sll have
connecons.

Stats: Raw –1, Hard +0, Smooth +0, Warm +1, Sharp +0.

Moves: High Stakes, Influencer, Moral Compass.

Relaonships
! You served in the marines during the Anathian war, where then-Colonel
Bachmann was CO. During the assault on Thanol, your unit caught friendly
fire from a bombardment that Bachmann must have ordered. As far as
you’re concerned she’s too comfortable by half with collateral damage. It’s
no longer acceptable to take risks with the future of the human race.
! Major Catan guided you to safety in the immediate aermath of the inial
Corax aack – probably saved your life. Catan is an impressive soldier, and a
trusted advisor who you can rely on.
! Chief Aldana is a very smart cookie and seems to see what others miss. You
use them as a source of informal advice.

214
 Player characters

Major Gabriel “Hurricane” Catan (Scorpio)

You are the chief military advisor to the President, and had believed yourself to
be the most senior surviving military officer unl Agamemnon arrived. You
helped guide the civilian fleet to safety in the immediate aermath of the Corax
aack. You narrowly survived a Corax aack in the early days of the war, but
you can’t remember anything about it. Now, with strange dreams and
unexplained events around you, you increasingly fear that you may be a Corax
sleeper agent. You have not yet menoned your doubts to anyone else.

Stats: Raw +0, Hard –1, Smooth +1, Warm +0, Sharp +0.

Moves: Sleeper Agent, Manipulave, Pilot.

Relaonships
! You haven’t known the President long, but you respect and trust him, and
serve loyally as his chief military adviser.
! You’re a huge fan of Admiral Bachmann. You were praccally raised on tales
of her exploits, and as far as you’re concerned she can walk on water. The
opportunity to serve with her is a dream come true.
! You’re in love with Livia Vega. You had a brief but intense romance a few
years ago, and you have held a candle for her ever since.
! You’re best friends with Chief Maki Tomika. You feel you could tell them
anything. Quick start

215
Quick Start Scenarios

Captain Livia “Minerva” Vega (Aries)

You are the Commander of the Air Group on Agamemnon. Since the war started
you’ve been fighng hit and run with the enemy. It’s dangerous, but
exhilarang – you’re in your element. Each me you go out there, you live on
the adrenaline then come back and kick back with some random ensign. Sll,
you can’t help but feel like you’ve been pushing your luck for weeks. Something
has to give.

Stats: Raw +1, Hard +0, Smooth –1, Warm +0, Sharp +0.

Moves: Explosive Decompression, Shotgun Diplomacy, Pilot.

Relaonships
! You’re sick of Bachmann’s shit. Just recently she ordered you into a near-
suicidal raid on a Corax mothership which almost got you killed.
Agamemnon has been making these sasfying but ulmately fule aacks
on the enemy for weeks, but it’s obvious the war is already lost and
everything since has been wasng me and depleng resources. It’s me to
admit defeat and focus on protecng the human race.
! You had a fling with Gabriel Catan years ago. You haven’t yet had the chance
to catch up properly.
! Just last night you got rip-roaringly drunk and ended up in bed with the Chief
Engineer from Hecate. You’re in her bunk right now, wondering how to get out
without half the engineering corps seeing you.

216
 Player characters

Chief Maki Tomika (Sagiarius)

You’re the Chief Engineer on Hecate. You were picked up from the wreck of the
Ariadne, ironically a salvage ship, aer it got caught in the crossfire of a bale
with the Corax. You watched helplessly from a hiding place as Corax creatures
dragged off your friends. Although inially distrusted as a possible Corax
infiltrator, you have won the trust of President Pereira and provide a caring ear
to many of the stressed-out Hecate crew, who have become a kind of surrogate
family since you came aboard.

Stats: Raw –1, Hard +0, Smooth +0, Warm +0, Sharp +1.

Moves: Tinkerer, Explorer, Engineer.

Relaonships
! President Pereira seems to have been impressed by you and has taken to
coming to you for advice.
! You’re best friends with Gabriel Catan. It’s obvious that something is really
bothering them lately, though they haven’t said anything. You’re worried
they’re going to crack under the pressure.
! Last night you got drunk with the Agamemnon pilots and ended up sleeping
with their CAG, Livia Vega. She is super-hot and a lile out of control.

Quick start

217
Quick Start Scenarios

GM Notes
This scenario is intended to focus primarily on the internal strife in the fleet.
The underlying queson you and the group should have answered by the end of
the first session is, whether the leadership of the Agamemnon and Hecate will
trust each other, and who is going to be dominant out of the President and the
Admiral. The character’s relaonships and background should set this up nicely:
so your role is to let them get on with it, but push and prod where needed to
get people talking or create further tension.

Give them some me inially to find their feet and explore who their characters
are, just like you would in a normal session. Bring in NPCs and facons (see the
Corax and Commonwealth seng, pages 199–209) to engage the players and
make them care, and use them mercilessly as stakes later on.

When they’ve had a good period of me to do that, have Major Catan wake up
with some sort of incriminang residue on their hands or clothes. Before Catan
can do anything to stop it, a bomb goes off somewhere on the fleet: choose
somewhere appropriate. Make the effects bad but not debilitang (don’t create
any Shortages or similar). The residue should obviously fit where you put the
bomb: fuel for a fuel ship, dirt for a hydroponics plant. It goes without saying
that Catan was responsible. Introduce evidence that could incriminate Catan,
but with the opportunity for Catan to hide or destroy it.

If you want to amp up the pressure further, you can supply evidence that a
second bomb may be out there: have someone show up claiming that there has
been a the of explosive materials. It could be from the armoury, or from a
mining ship. The quanty taken is enough to make more than one bomb.

218
 GM Notes

You can also poke and prod at the polical and social situaon using your
facons and NPCs. Have them sound off with their opinions, or even approach a
player offering some kind of deal – see the facons secon for suggesons.

If you think it will help with pacing, you may wish to have the Corax fleet show
up, either sending scout ships or a full-blown aack fleet. Do this carefully: it
will suck up a good chunk of me, and likely distract people from their
differences. I recommend doing it only once, if at all, so that there’s a chance to
regroup and reconsider how they feel about each other now that they’ve
fought together.

Note that if the fuel Shortage becomes a significant focus, you should consider
that there is enough fuel for the Agamemnon or the civilian fleet to keep going
for a good long while – but not both. In other words, Agamemnon could
cannibalize the fleet to keep going if it wanted to. Alternavely, the fleet could
go looking for mineral deposits or abandoned Commonwealth fuel facilies –
but searching would use up fuel, me or both.

Of course, I strongly encourage you to put your own twist on this scenario.
Introduce addional threats and events to engage the characters according to
your own insncts and preferences. The above events serve as a skeleton to
hang your own story off.

Summary of the above:

! An inial few scenes of quiet, to enable conversaons, establish
relaonships and introduce NPCs.
Quick start

! Catan wakes up with incriminang evidence, then a bomb goes off.

! [oponal] Supply evidence of a second bomb.
! [oponal] Corax fleet shows up.

219
Quick Start Scenarios

Quick start
scenario: Dictys
and Danae
Misha Bushyager

Note: This scenario deals with the treatment of refugees/prisoners of war. It

should not be taken lightly nor should the refugees be abused. You may end up
making a hard choice to abandon them. Addionally, there may be children
placed in peril both by your decision and by the situaon. Please make sure
everyone is comfortable with that. There will also be themes of food scarcity
and possible starvaon. One PC is wrien as the birth parent of another PC; but
whether or not that is known is le up to the players. Feel free to change that
relaonship if necessary.

You are the crew of the Dictys, a scout ship: expendable, front line, extremely
mobile. You are not the dregs of the fleet but prey close.

You just encountered another ship, a Corax ship: only the people on it were not
under Corax control… at least, that’s what you think they said – communicaon
has been difficult. They managed to slip free of the Corax’s programming and
stole a Corax ship they are calling the Danae. With a deteriorang ship, and low
on supplies, they are driing through empty space. 28 refugees are on board,
28 lives – though it isn’t clear whether they are human lives.

The vessel was under fire from a Corax cruiser when you came across it and the
cruiser turned its weapons on you. You were able to fire back, and you disabled
the ship, but do not know if they were able to send out a message to the Corax
motherships. The ship is sll there, floang in space – perhaps the first me a

220
there has been an opportunity to examine a helpless Corax ship away from
immediate threat of aack.

The Dictys took heavy damage in the exchange. Engines are offline, the pilot of
one of your small fighters was injured grievously, the science and med bays are
offline, and the communicaons array took a nasty hit. You think you can
currently send long range, but incoming transmissions don’t appear to be
working, so you don’t know if the rest of the Fleet knows where you are or if
they’re coming for you.

The survivors on the Danae are starving and exhausted and speak an enrely
different language than the Fleet Standard. One of the specialists from
engineering says he remembers his grandmother talking like they do, from
when he was a kid. He is working with them work on communicaons between
the two groups.

At the start of the game, aer characters have been introduced, take turns to
say how your character feels about the refugees.

Quick start

221
Quick Start Scenarios

Setup
Use the Commonwealth and the Corax seng described on page 199–209 above.

Skip the usual character creaon and world setup, and don’t use the Momentum
Move, the effects of which are baked into the starng setup and GM notes. (If
you’re using this as a campaign starter, use these Moves as normal aer that.)

Use the characters set out below. Have the players read out the Playbook text
as normal, plus the descripve informaon next to each character’s name. If
you have fewer than five players, use them in the order they’re listed (in other
words, first drop Kirby, then McGuire, then Stokes). GM: you can and should use
any skipped-over characters as NPCs.

As normal for a game starng in the aermath of a crisis, the characters start
with three Pressure Marked, and the fleet starts with Momentum –1. For a one-
shot using this scenario, Mark four Arion rather than the usual two
(represenng recent bale damage to the Dictys).

Player characters

Colonel Kallin Burns (Taurus)

You are the Captain of the Dictys. You proved yourself worthy of a command
many mes over the years, first as a pilot, then as the XO of the fleet flagship.
When you were finally forced to accept a command of your own you chose the
Dictys willingly, despite the hit your career will take from being so far from the
rest of the fleet command. Your reasons for choosing it are your own.

Stats: Raw –1, Hard +1, Smooth 0, Warm 0, Sharp 0.

Moves: Unshakeable Beliefs, No One Le Behind, Taccian.

222
 Player characters

Relaonships
! Jaksyn Stokes and I go way back. While I climbed through the ranks, they
seemed content to remain a pilot. I was given my choice of command and I
chose the Dictys, because even though it was a step down, Jaksyn was here.
! Wiker was next in line for command of the Dictys before I asked for it.
! I trust McGuire’s insncts almost as much as my own when it comes to the
crew of the Dictys. Somemes even more. But I’m worried about the
pressure they are pung themselves under.
! Halister Kirby and I have been seeing each other. I really like them but I have
to be careful about how it might look to the rank and file.

Major Lena Wiker (Gemini)

You are a likeable sort and you worked and schmoozed your ass off to get
where you are only to have it snatched away by some shirker looking for an
easy command. Well you are not going to take it lying down. You are fairly sure
most of the grunts will follow anyway and you’ve been plong to take control
of the ship.

Stats: Raw 0, Hard 0, Smooth +1, Warm 0, Sharp –1.

Moves: Playing Both Sides, Louche, Marine.

Relaonships
! I’ve caught a few mistakes around the ship. The more I see, the more I’m
Quick start

convinced they’re coming from Kirby: and now I’m sure they are deliberately
seng me up so as to expose my plans.
! McGuire looks up to me. Maybe they’re starstruck by my reputaon, maybe
I remind them of a parent: who knows?

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Quick Start Scenarios

! Captain Burns – sorry, “Call me Kallin” – needs me to be their enforcer, the

heavy to their so touch. It’s annoying: and I’d be a much beer Captain.
! I’m prey sure Burns and Stokes are personal friends and it burns me up
that Stokes got made XO ahead of me.

Major Jaksyn Stokes (Cancer)

All you ever wanted was to fly and hang out with you childhood buddy Kallin.
Except for the year before Lake was born, before you gave them up, you’ve
been able to do that. Kallin should have taken a beer assignment; but selfishly
you’re glad they’re here.

Stats : Raw 0, Hard 0, Smooth 0, Warm +1, Sharp –1.

Moves: Turn A Blind Eye, Walk Out Of This Room While You Sll Can, Pilot.

Relaonships
! Burns and I have known each other since we were children.
! Lake McGuire is my child, though they do not know it, and I’ve followed
their career. When they volunteered for the Dictys, I made sure I got
assigned here too.
! Wiker is mad because I outrank them and Kallin made me the new XO. If I
get them to follow an order without quesoning it, I’ll eat my boots.
! Kirby is seeing Burns on the QT. They seem like a good egg. They just need to
keep their eye on the task that’s in front of them and their head out of the
stars before they get us all killed.

224
 Player characters

Specialist Lake McGuire (Virgo)

You have always been curious. Your adopted parents tried to steer your
inquisiveness into producve channels like science, but you sll keep your ear
to the wall on more personal things. You’ve been helping Kirby to invesgate
some weird accidents that have been happening on the Dictys. Now, you’re sure
you’re on the cusp of figuring out how to tell the Corax infiltrators from the rest
of the fleet, and you won’t stop unl you solve it.

Stats : Raw –1, Hard 0, Smooth 0, Warm 0, Sharp +1.

Moves : Single-minded, Smmed To The Eyeballs, Invesgator.

Relaonships
! Captain Burns is sure I’m going to crack, but I know I can figure this out if I
just have a lile more me.
! Halister Kirby needs me. I know I can help them solve this. If only all these
weird mishaps would stop ruining our experiments…
! I don’t think Major Wiker likes me. They’re sll upset about that fire that
wrecked the officer’s mess – no maer how many mes I explain that it
wasn’t my fault.

Quick start

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Quick Start Scenarios

Lt Colonel Halister Kirby (Scorpio)

Ever since that aack on the mothership a couple of years ago, weird stuff has
been happening around you. You came away victorious, but you feel wrong
somehow, and lile things go missing or seem out of place. But it feels like
recently it’s been geng more dangerous: stuff that if you hadn’t caught it,
could have got people killed. That near failure of the airlock? Good thing Wiker
caught it BEFORE the fighters launched. You’re in charge of the science labs
now, so it’s up to you to figure out who the Danae refugees really are – and
make sure you fix any “mistakes” that come up on the way, before anyone else
noces.

Stats : Raw 0, Hard 0, Smooth +1, Warm –1, Sharp 0.

Moves: Sleeper Agent, Where There’s A Way, Scienst.

Relaonships
! Kallin and I have been geng… close recently. I want to tell them everything,
but I think they’ll hate me for it.
! Major Wiker keeps covering for my… missteps. I’m not sure quite why but
I’m grateful… unless they’re somehow responsible for them…
! Stokes was sure I was just using Kallin and gave me a talking to that had my
knees quaking, but now I think we’re on the same page.
! McGuire is “helping” me invesgate my problem. I’ve had to work with them
just to keep an eye on them, but it’s only a maer of me before they figure
it out.

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 Player characters

NPCs
! Specialist Kaden Jons His grandmother spoke a second language, similar to
that of the Danae survivors. He’s working on communicang with them but
he’s also one of the Dictys’ beer mechanics; and engineering could use his
help making the repairs just as much if not more.
! Sgt Riva Okami Wiker’s former lover and head of engineering. She’s all for
pung Wiker in charge of the Dictys and ditching the survivors of the
Danae. Hell, anyone who wants to sck with Burns can get ditched too, for
all she cares.
! Dr Tiff Scot Chief Medical officer of the Dictys. She’s been diagnosing the
injured on the Danae, and demonstrang how to help them in mime over
the viewscreen. She’s convinced they’re fully human, based on what she’s
seeing, and is trying to convince the rest of the crew. She’s one of the
leading voices in the sciensts’ facon to bring the Danae survivors on
board, to help treat their injuries if nothing else.
! Lt Cas Hout He thinks Beller from the Danae looks like the sping image of
the picture of his great-grandfather. He wants to bring the whole group over
for tesng.
! Talia Xob Leader of the Danae refugees. She’s trying to get her people to
safety as much as the crew of the Dictys are trying to save their shipmates.
! Beller Ophon The eldest of the refugees, an elderly gentleman with
avuncular vibes. He’s got an injury but insists on making sure everyone else
Quick start

gets checked out first.

Notes: Whether there are children or not among either the refugees or on the
Dictys is enrely up to your table. If there are, make sure you agree as a group
about how much peril they will be in with regards to any decision made about
the Danae and her survivors.

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Quick Start Scenarios

Ships

Dictys
A cruiser with a crew of 50, with three smaller fighters that can be deployed for
protecons. Scouts are usually deployed for six months before returning to the
fleet for re-supply. Their purpose is to find threats to the fleet as well as look for
habitable planets and potenal allies. The Dictys is two months into its latest
deployment, its first under Captain Burns. There are three levels: the bridge;
the flight deck, science bay and engineering; and the crew quarters, lounges,
and storage. The science bays house spore samples from the Corax, sealed in
mulple controlled environments for various experiments, kept away from the
main fleet to prevent an accidental spread in case of containment breach.

Danae
The Danae is a Corax transport ship, lightly armed, ill supplied, and composed
of the bridge and a single large room. Stolen by Talia Xob and the other 27
refugees, it is now out of fuel and floang listlessly. The two ships have
managed to connect on the short-range frequencies, and there is potenally
useful Corax technology on it if the crew can find a way to retrieve it safely.

Kraken
The hulk of the cruiser floats nearby. There hasn’t been a peep from it since the
explosion right before the guns went silent. This presents the rare opportunity
to examine a helpless Corax ship. The sciensts of the Dictys are clamouring to
explore the ship, sure there is some secret to the infiltraon that they will
discover there. Likewise, engineering hopes they can scavenge it for parts to
repair the ship and possibly get ahead of the Corax technologically.

228
 NPCs

Polydectes
The sibling ship of the Dictys. It was last in contact with them right before they
made the jump to end up at the Danae. They are the most likely to respond first
to any transmissions from the Dictys.

Factions

Muneers
Those of the crew loyal to Wiker could be persuaded to take over the ship and
turn control back over to Wiker, and might even take acon themselves if Burns
seems not to be in control of the situaon. The only thing currently stopping
them is the penalty for muny: no-one wants to get drummed out of the fleet if
they fail. There are some rumours swirling around about how the last Captain
died, and some of it links back to Burns, even though they weren’t on or near
the ship at the me. This facon has control of most of the weapons if a muny
does occur, and any who oppose them would likely perish.

Sciensts
The sciensts on the Dictys are among both the most likely to figure out the
Corax infiltraon problem and the most expendable. Many think they’re on the
cusp of discovery, but the Fleet command structure is scepcal without any
evidence. They want to bring the survivors from the Danae on board to study
them: to see if their claim of throwing off the spore control is true – and, if so,
how?
Quick start

Danae Refugees
28 people led by Talia.

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Quick Start Scenarios

GM Notes
The heart of the conflict is what to do with the Danae and its occupants. Leave
it there and let the people starve? Salvage it and tow it back to the fleet for
further study? The Dictys will be ght quarters, and even ghter raons, if it
takes on the crew from the Danae. Unl they solve the language gap, the
refugees won’t be much use to the fleet. It’s important to take any opportunity
to spotlight the (apparent) humanity of the people on board, to make them
seem like more than just resources. At the same me, play up the
miscommunicaon potenal with the refugees from the Danae, so that it’s not
possible to interrogate them in detail or verify who they really are.

With only the short-range comms working and a couple of the fighters out of
commission, they’ll be sing ducks if the Corax managed to summon
reinforcements. Therefore it’s best to save any such Move unl near the end, if
you make it at all.

Secondarily, there is a conngent on the Dictys who are upset that Wiker was
passed over for Burns. There are rumblings about a muny, making how Burns
handles this situaon – their first real test as Captain – even more high-stakes.
One way to throw things into even greater chaos would be to have the
muneer facon, led by Sgt Okami, take direcon acon and/or demand Burns’
removal.

230
 Factions

If Kirby is a PC, then for their sleeper agent setup try one of the following:

1 Some of the Corax samples from the labs are missing, and Kirby finds them
in the med bay among the supplies.
2 There’s an old book belonging to Jons that could help to translate the
refugees’ language but it’s missing. Kirby finds the charred remains in the
laboratory.
3 The rumours being spread about Burns are coming from notes distributed to
key crew members, wrien in Kirby’s handwring.
Put Doom Clocks on the Corax reinforcements and the ship repairs. There might
be inorganic components floang about, so that scavenging from bale detritus
may help with repairs. Powering up components from any Corax vessel should
push the Corax Doom Clock forward and alert the Corax to the locaon of the
Danae and Dictys.

Quick start

231
Promethia Damned

Promethia Damned
An Alternate Seng by Gav Thorpe

“You can trick the Fates but you cannot outrun Death.”

In the Mortal Age, a great civilizaon spread across the ferle plains and came
to be known as Promethia. Many were its miracles and wonders, for the people
of Promethia mastered not only the magic of mortals but also entreated great
aid from the Gods. With every passing generaon their dominion became more
complete – over land, over water, over air and even over me.

Yet there was ever a boundary they could not cross – the great rivers of Styx
and Acheron that separated mortals from immortals. No maer how far
heavenward they strove, the wise of Promethia were ever slaves to Hades and
the power of Death.

As me passed the cies and peoples of Promethia became more and more
obsessed with avoiding that last journey to the cold realm of Hades. They
extended their lives beyond natural measure and developed magical
technologies that could heal grievous wounds and cure fatal illnesses; but
always there came a me when life force diminished past the ability to
resuscitate, be that aer a century or more of vitality.

Such longevity came at a price, for the gods would grant no more life even if the
span of existence was extended. Childlessness became the norm and each
generaon dwindled a lile in number even as they enjoyed the sweetest fruits
of their ancestors’ miracles and research. It maered lile to the Prometheons
for they had automatones of Hephaistos to labour and care for them, allowing
them to devote their lives to the study of Death.

232
One day a triumvirate of the greatest minds – the best of theology, medicine
and magic – created a trap for the enty known as Charon, the embodiment of
the force that moved a soul from the realm of life to the underworld of Hades.
The Charonteikos occluded the spirit of Charon, severing the link between the
mortal and immortal realms; effecvely creang a barrier to the deparng
spirits of the living so that they did not flee.

Immortality had been achieved. At first this seemed a great miracle, for not
even the most hideous wounds, savage viruses nor old age would cause the
Prometheons to perish. There came no more children, but it was not
considered a burden to those that would live forever. What need for
generaonal legacy when one would not die? But in solving the riddle of
mortality there was no goal le for which the Prometheons strived. They
quickly found themselves listless and bored, and without peril to life no exploit
or adventure seemed to sr them.

They connued to sacrifice to the gods and so their transgression against Hades
was not discovered. Yet the torture of unending existence took its toll on the
minds of the cies’ people, and they slowly were driven mad by tedium and
lack of purpose. Yet there was not one that wished to renounce their
immortality for now that they were deathless they feared more than ever the
realm of the Underworld.

Eventually, the triumvirate came together again in secret, and they spoke of the
ill in the world that they had brought. Aer much debate, the scholars broke
open the Charonteikos and released Charon. Disaster befell Promethia as Death
returned, with old wounds inflicted anew and the decay of robbed centuries
visited upon the cies.
Promethia

233
Promethia Damned

As the dying connued, the people raised up their voices and made great
sacrifice to Hades but in doing so they drew his eye upon the sins they had
commied against him.

Moved to rare rage, Hades unleashed terrible forces against Promethia. Nemesis
released unto him the Keres, the embodiment of Violent Death, to reclaim that
which had been kept from him. The Keres were vengeful indeed for they were
sisters to Charon, who had been shamed and was sll partly imprisoned by the
device of Promethia. Hades bade the Fates, the Moira, to seek out the fugives
and guide Death aer them. The animated spirits of the dead were brought
forth; as unwing spies in the form of Returned Prometheons, and as
footsoldiers in the form of the Doom, an army of the dead.

The scholars did what they could to repair the Charonteikos, yet they could not
fully restore the barrier between themselves and the gods; they could only
move themselves from beneath their divine gaze for a while. Though the
Charonteikos shielded Promethia for a while, its people were no longer
immortal, nor could they hide from the gaze of the Moira for long. For a
generaon they fled from realm to realm, remaining in a place as long as
possible while they entreated the other gods to spare what favours they could,
making sacrifices to please them so that they might exert their divine authority
to power the Charonteikos afresh. Some gods did so because for they could not
refuse the sacrifices offered; other gods connued to vex Hades for their own
purposes, as the rivalries and alliances of the immortals connued without end.
The Prometheons hoped that one day their travails and travels would bring
them to Olympus itself so that they might throw themselves upon the mercy of
Zeus and the other high gods and make atonement for their transgressions.

234
 Gaming with Promethia

Gaming with Promethia

Drawing upon the same mythologies as the universe of the Interplanetary
Commonwealth, the Promethia cosmology doesn’t require any adjustment to
the rules as laid out for the standard background of Last Fleet.

In place of starships we have cies, each an independent state but bound

together by common heritage and shared fate. They are, of course, larger than
starships, but the populace of Promethia that escaped the Keres was a fracon
of those that once lived there, so many of their ancient avenues, halls and
palaces are abandoned, falling into ruin. There are a few children, none older
than teenagers, while everyone else is likely to be younger than fiy – the
oldest Prometheons were the first to die when the Keres were released.

The universe is High Concept, in that it combines elements of technology,

magic, and divine power, all in the same place. However, none of these is all-
encompassing – the gods are fickle and demanding, technology is breaking
down, and magic is unpredictable and dangerous.

However, the combinaon of these three elements gives you anything you
might want from the science-ficon roots of the system – ornithopters and
winged beasts for pilots to fly; the Charonteikos is the equivalent of the FTL
drives of the fleet; and rather than vising strange planets, the cies come
across enre dimensions that have their own peculiaries, dangers, and
opportunies.

Some of these places may be within the mortal sphere, much like our own but
with hidden dangers from flora and fauna, and other sociees – especially if
inspired by myth, such as a weird take on centaurs who will only help the
Promethia

players if they join a riotous feast, or finding a bounful alien orchard only to
discover it is protected by the epimelides nymphs.

235
Promethia Damned

Other desnaons might within the realms of the gods – literally. Imagine an
undersea series of adventures whilst bargaining with Phorkys, Triton and other
undersea creatures, or a spectral moonscape under the guardianship of Hecate.
These realms are not without strife, from rival powers and external threats. By
performing tasks for these divine beings the people of the cies can stave off
the Keres for a while, earning favour and building opposion to Hades among
the other gods.

Technology and magic

There is an overlap between magic and technology, with many of the weapons,
vehicles and devices of the Prometheons powered by myscal energy, though
this power then converts into physical forms such as moon, electricity and
heat. Nobody is sure where magic comes from, but it is linked to the gods in
some way. As they move across dimensions, the cies encounter other magical
properes, some of which interfere with or boost exisng magic, some that
distort or nullify it.

Maintenance is a problem, with the knowledge of the oldest rituals lost during
the great death following the breaking of the Charonteikos. More and more the
Prometheons are having to rely on non-magical soluons as they cannot rely on
their more esoteric invenons. Even so, weaponry, communicaon and
medicine are on a par with a science ficon-level background even if some of it
is aained by slightly less orthodox means.

The Gods
The gods of Promethia do not bestow their gis lightly. Sacrifice – charis – is
required to feed their egos and give them worship so that they may connue to
compete with each other in their immortal contests. In the Mortal Age sacrifice
took the form of slaughtered animals and feasts, and some of that custom has
returned.

236
 Gaming with Promethia

More common is personal sacrifice (in the shape of Pressure) that individuals
take upon themselves, dedicang parcular acts, days and efforts to a named
deity. To sacrifice is to give up, and so they give of themselves to their god, be it
in bale, in the home, or at some other place. They sacrifice me, blood,
energy, and thought.

Each god has a priesthood, but oen only the head priest serves on a full-me
basis. Temples are maintained by those wishing to make sacrifice, and tended
on a part-me basis by more dedicated followers. Cies, families, organizaons,
and even individuals will have a patron god or gods they turn to, and to whom
they will make oaths.

In return the gods protect, empower, and present gis to their peoners. The
greatest way they do this is by passing their divine influence into the
Charonteikos. When fully illuminated, the Charonteikos can transplant the cies
to a new realm. Somemes a city is lacking in its sacrifice, and its connecon to
the Charonteikos is weak. At such mes there is a risk that the city will be le
behind when Promethia breaks realms.

Charis is not a simple cause-and-effect, but an ongoing relaonship with the

gods. When making hasty sacrifice, for instance, a peoner may remind the
god of more elaborate and honoured sacrifices in the past, and of favours the
god has granted previously. Even so, the gods have their own rules and desires,
and there are no guarantees that their intervenon will be beneficial; especially
in the longer term.

Changes to Basic Moves

! When you Raise the Pressure, you must dedicate your acon to a god.
Promethia

! When you make a ritual sacrifice, roll to Pull Strings and accept divine aid. In
addion to the usual opons, this may be used to call on supernatural
assistance. On a 6 or less, you anger the gods.

237
Promethia Damned

Factions and Special Persons

As menoned, each god has their own priesthood, but only a relave handful
have any significant power – the cults of Zeus, Hades, Athena, Demeter, and
Hera have the most influence in the majority of cies. Of these, the Cults of
Zeus and Athena have twin rule over Promethia.

Cult of Zeus
The priesthood of Zeus, led by the archon basileus (king-magistrate), is
dedicated to the running of Promethia as a society. Their goal is, ulmately, to
bring Promethia to Mount Olympus where they may peon Zeus directly. To
this end they wish all of Promethia to dedicate to Zeus as oen as possible, to
build up his goodwill toward the cies.

Key NPCs:
! Polyxena Olympias is the archon basilissa, as close to a ruler as Promethia
has given its city-state structure. She rules the largest city of Agamemnon
and is head of the cult of Zeus, which gives her immense influence, except
over the armed forces of the cies. She is relavely new to the role,
however, and relies heavily on her advisors and the good will of the Cult of
Athena.

Moves:
! Demand a heavy sacrifice.
! Power – or withhold – acvaon of the Charonteikos.
! Bestow – or withhold – gis of Zeus.
! Movate with gied oratory.

238
 Factions and special persons

The Cult of Athena

Athena is the goddess of war and her high priest is the polemarchos, a
combinaon of general, air marshal, and high admiral in one rank. Unl the
coming of the Keres the military of Promethia was almost enrely automatones,
but nearly all have been lost in the fighng. Now, a new mortal army and air
force has been created to honour Athena in the hopes of holding back the
aacks of the Doom. Young and precocious, these warriors are foolhardy and
eager to prove their worth, yet can ill-afford to lose many of their number in
bale. Not all members of the cult are fighng personnel, there are many that
help behind the lines that wish to dedicate themselves to military success.

Key NPCs:
! Marios Challimachus is only the second polemarchos since the strife began,
taking over the posion when his predecessor was slain just two years into
the me of woe. Marios has elevated the cult from a ceremonial oddity to a
fighng force capable of defending the cies against the Keres and their
legions.
! Laureline “Terrapin” Laval. A support gyrocopter pilot. Cauous, seen as
dependable, but possibly cracking under pressure. As with other gyro-pilots,
she is at the forefront of keeping watch for the arrival of the Winged Furies
and has even been known to engage them on occasion despite not having a
frontline combat cra.

Moves:
! Recruit for the war effort.
! Demonstrate great – perhaps foolhardy – courage.
! Make a bombasc speech.
Promethia

! Rigidly follow orders.

! Strike an enemy ruthlessly.

239
Promethia Damned

The Scholars
The Scholars as an organizaon are the intellectual descendants of the three that
created the Charonteikos and as you might expect they are responsible for its
upkeep and acvaon. They are, however, subject to the command of two
individuals to do so – the heads of the cults of Zeus and Athena. Without
authorizaon from both, they will not – cannot – transfer the cies to a new realm.
The Triumvirate ruling council succeeded the original creators of the Charonteikos.
Beneath them work a number of officials, philosophers, magisters, sciensts, and
others trying to organize and understand the powers that have been unleashed,
while researching ways to help steer Promethia and combat the Doom.

Key NPCs:
! Professor Kin Shoa. A mid-level official of the Scholars, Professor Kin is
conducng an audit of the fleet’s assets, although if anyone checks there are
no records of him being authorized to do so. His history with the Scholars is
also vague but his placement allows him to travel from city to city without
restricon. When spoken to, the professor seems to be pushing for
rededicaon to the gods: but whether that’s for ideological reasons, to
address scarcity on the fleet, or for personal polical gain, is a maer of
speculaon. The truth is that Kin Shoa is the god Hermes in mortal form,
sent by Zeus to monitor the progress, and loyalty, of the Prometheons. He is
aware of the existence of the Returned and will reveal this secret at some
future point. The fate of all the cies could well depend on what the
professor concludes from his visits…

Moves:
! Recall old wisdom.
! Denigrate a Rival.
! Discuss Cosmology.
! Analyse a problem.

240
 The DOom

The Doom
The Keres are uerly relentless, empowered by Hades to bring back every single
soul of the Prometheons. Their pursuit follows a specific sequence of events.

The Moira
The Moira are the Fates, who spin and cut the thread of me for mortals. They
are constantly seeking the cies of Promethia across the realms of the
immortals.

Moves:
! Direct the Doom with uncanny foresight.
! Commence a Doom Clock, portending the arrival of the Furies, Keres, or
Doom.

The Winged Furies

The first to arrive are the Winged Furies, circling over the cies of Promethia to
guide the eye of the Moira. They are the heralds of the Doom and if not turned
back, the skies darken and pulse with the energy of Hades as the Keres arrive
with their legion. The only opon for the Prometheons is to flee, with such cies
that have made sufficient sacrifices to the gods call upon their divine power to
take them through the gate summoned by the Charontheikos. However, to do so
they must hold off the aacks of the Winged Furies unl the gate is open.

Moves:
! Gather in the skies above a city.
! Summon a Keres.
! Overwhelm with sheer numbers.
Promethia

! Demoralize the populace.

241
Promethia Damned

The Returned
The Winged Furies are not the only means Hades has of trailing the cies
through the realms. He can send spirits back in corporeal form, and several
already exist within the cies and are unwingly trying to create the condions
for more to arrive. These Returned souls, restored to their living state, have no
recollecons of their deaths unl Hades calls upon them to act. Using Hypnos,
the God of Sleep, Hades speaks to these spirits and commands them to perform
acts against their companions, though they have no recollecon of such
instrucon.

Keres
“The black Dooms gnashing their white teeth, grim-eyed, fierce, bloody, terrifying,
fought over the men who were dying for they were all longing to drink dark blood.
As soon as they caught a man who had fallen or one newly wounded, one of them
clasped her great claws around him and his soul went down to Hades, to chilly
Tartarus. And when they had sasfied their hearts with human blood, they would
throw that one behind them and rush back again into the bale and the tumult.”
– Hesiod.

The Keres are the embodiment of Hades’ thirst for bloody vengeance. It is
uncertain how many there are, though it seems likely there are at least three,
each commanding a cohort of the Doom. They cannot slay themselves but wait
for the souls that make up the Doom to kill, and then they draw the deparng
Spirit for hades, whilst feasng on the physical remains.

Where the Keres arrive, they bring with them a floang temple-ark that is a
physical gateway to Hades. (Yes, it is a base ship!) Large numbers of the Doom
swily follow, but the Keres are fearful of their own demise and can be driven
away by sff counter-aack if assailed swily. It is also believed by many across
Prometheia that if the dead are allowed to linger – that is the corpses – they act

242
 The Doom

as a beacon to the Keres. Thus, cremaon is carried out as swily as possible

while ongoing bale will draw more of their kind.

Moves:
! Summon the Doom.
! Spread Terror.
! Despatch Winged Furies.
! Feast on Souls.

Soldiers of the Doom

The army, the Doom, are almost universally incorporeal spirits that can
temporarily take form when they break through the Charonic Veil – as ghostly
creatures, zombie dragons, skeletons, wights, whatever takes your fancy. Their
hold is tenuous and easily broken, but the dead are effecvely limitless, so
there are always more soon to arrive.

Custom Moves:
! The Doom are unaffected by noteworthy damage, they respond only to
serious effects and worse. Conversely, they are individually weak and groups
fewer than five cannot easily finish off wounded and damaged foes – they
await the Keres to complete what they begin.

Moves:
! Become incorporeal.
! Manifest terrifying aspect.
! Chilling Touch.
! Assail a city.
Promethia

243
Index
Index
A D
Arion ......................................9,14,38–40
starng................................................85
B Death ......................................................191
Basic Moves...................................16–17,27
Call someone on their shit ...16,106–107
Cover up...............................17,101–103
End of scene move............................112
Engage in bale .......................17,89–90
Interfere ...............................18,108–109
Let loose..........................16,21,104–106
Momentum move ................40,110–111
Pull strings...................................97–100
Raise the pressure...................16,30,110
Reach out .............................16,103–104
Seek out ...................................17,94–95
Shake off ..................................17,91–92
Support ................................18,108–109
Wait helplessly.............................18,109
Weather serious harm .............17,92–93
Bales
see Space Bales
Breaking Point ...............................13,30–32
C Core Moves: .................................60–61
Cardinal Moves....................................14,29
Chain of command .........................176–178
Characters, creang.............84–85,180–181
Corax, the ......................10,80,199,205–209
Commonwealth, the.............10,80,199–205
Core Moves
see GM Moves
Clocks
see Doom Clocks
Cover up vs seek out.......................102–103
244
Damage ..........................................186–191
to ship systems..........................189–190
to the enemy.....................................190
Doom Clocks................................35–37,192
E
Erase ....................................................13,15
Example of play ..............................117–126
F
Facons .........................................74–75,83
As a threat.....................................74–75
Creang...............................................83
Ficon, the......................................15,26,27
First session ........................................86–87
Fleet tracks .........................................38–40
Forward ....................................................15
G
GM, the...........................................11,12,42
GM Moves ......................12,27,28,43,60–77
Bring the consequences to bear
...........................................45–46,61
Make them choose........................61
Put something at stake.......46,60–61
Signal what’s coming ....45–46,60–61
Handling player moves ..................46
Responding with a GM Move ..45–46
Themac Moves: ..........................62–71
Impose a mechanical consequence,
as established..........................69–70
Kill their darlings............................66
Make a Threat Move .....................71
 Make demands..............................63
Set the clock cking.......................62
Someone loses it .....................64–65
Stoke suspicion........................63–64
Take something away ....................66
Unleash mayhem.....................67–68
When to Make a Move ..................27,44
GM Principles
see principles
H Cancer ..................................18,139–141
Hard..........................................................14
Hit (strong, weak) ................................13,28
Hold ..........................................................15
I Sagiarius ............................19,155–157
Interrogaon........................................21,96
M Virgo.....................................19,145–147
Mark ....................................................13,15
Miss .....................................................13,28
Momentum ........................................38–40
starng................................................85
Moves .......................................12,13,26–29
Basic.............................13,16,27,89–112
GM ............................................12,27,28
List of player moves ............................16
Playbook ........................................13,27
Player .................12,13,26,27,28,89–116
Role .................................13,27,113–116
Focus the game on acon, intrigue, and
drama..................................................11
Engage the people around the table...11
Play to find out what happens ............11
Ongoing ....................................................15
P
Playbooks.............................18–19,130–167
Aquarius...............................19,161–163
Aries .....................................18,130–132
Capricorn .............................19,158–160
Gemini..................................18,136–138
Leo .......................................19,142–144
Libra .....................................19,148–150
Pisces ...................................19,164–167
Scorpio .................................19,151–154
Taurus ..................................18,133–135
Pressure......................................9,13,30–31
starng................................................85
Principles ............................................47–54
Everyone is up to something.........50–51
Failure is not an opon .................53–54
Make the ficon and the mechanics
transparent ...................................52–53
Make them care ..................................49
Make scarcity ubiquitous ..............51–52
Make space for interpersonal drama ..48
No mercy.............................................47
Promethia.......................................232–243

N Q
NPCs .....................................27,34,181–185
Queson moves......................................100
and mechanical effects .......................34

O R
Rank.........................................168,172–174
Objecves.................................................11
Bring the characters, the fleet and the Raw...........................................................14
war to life ............................................11 Relaonships ............................................33
Relaonship quesons .............................85
Index

245
Index
Role moves .....................................113–116
Engineer...............................39,114–115
Influencer..........................................116
Invesgator .......................................116
Marine ..............................................116
Pilot...................................................116
Scienst.....................................114–115
Taccian ....................................113–114
Rolling the dice ....................................13,28
S see GM Moves
Safety..................................................20–21
Scale ........................................94,97,99,101
Scenarios ..........................................21–231
Cold war ....................................211–219
Dycs and Danae ......................220–231
Scenes, framing and ending ...............25–26
Seng...................79–83,199–209,232–243
Seng up the game............................79–88
Sharp ........................................................14
Ships ...............................................168–171
types ..................................169,178–179
creang .....................................169–170
Shortages.........................................9,36–37
Smooth .....................................................15
Space Bales ..................................191–198
Stats...............................................13,14–15
Hard ....................................................14
Raw .....................................................14
Sharp...................................................14
Smooth ...............................................15
Warm ..................................................15
T
Teaching the game..............................22–23
Tech levels ................................................83
246
Techniques................................................55
Ask quesons ................................56–57
Draw maps ..........................................59
Fast forward, flash back ................58–59
Go with your gut ...........................55–56
Hard scene framing.............................58
Share the spotlight around ...........57–58
Speak to the ficon.............................55
What do you do? ................................59
Themac Moves
Threats...........................................71,72–77
Enemy fleet ...................................75–76
Facons.........................................74–75
Infiltrators .....................................76–77
Locaons.............................................77
People .................................................72
The fleet leadership ......................73–74
Tracks...................................13,14,15,38–39
Arion....................................14,38–40
Momentum...................................38–40
Pressure .........................................13,30
XP ........................................................14
W
Warm........................................................15
X
XP....................................................14,29,32
Player Moves
A Special Task .........................................149
Acceptable Losses...................................159
Alien Affinity ...........................................154
Aquarius Moves..............................161–163
Aries Moves ....................................130–132
Basic Moves......................................89–112
By The Numbers .....................................146
Call Someone On Their Shit ............106–107
Cancer Moves .................................140–141
Capricorn Moves ............................158–159
Charismac.............................................143
Close Ranks.............................................153
Compromised .................................136–137
Cover Up.........................................101–102
Dedicated Focus .....................................163
Don’t Let Me Down ................................140
Doomsayer .............................................158
End Of Scene Move ................................112
Engage In Bale..................................89–90
Engineer .........................................114–115
Explorer ..................................................156
Explosive Decompression .......................131
Fireside Chat...........................................148
Followers ................................................144
Gemini Moves.................................136–138
Geng To Know All About You ...............156
High Stakes .............................................148
I Have Seen It..........................................165
In The Neighbourhood ...........................156
Influencer ...............................................116
Inhuman Insight..............................165–166
Interfere..........................................108–109
Invesgator.............................................116
Knew I Could Count On You....................149
Lead By Example.....................................142
Leo Moves ......................................142–144
Let Loose ........................................104–106
Libra Moves ....................................148–149
Lord Flashheart.......................................143
Louche ....................................................138
Loved By The Faithful .............................167
Manipulave...........................................153
Marine ....................................................116
Maverick .................................................130
Mind Palace ............................................166
Momentum Move ..........................110–111
Moral Compass.......................................149
Mysc Aunement.........................166–167
No Half Measures ...................................159
No One Le Behind ................................134
On Trial ...................................................162
Passions Run High...................................132
Pilot ........................................................116
Pisces Moves ..................................165–167
Playing Both Sides ..................................137
Pointed Quesons ..........................161–162
Pull Strings........................................97–100
Raise The Pressure..................................110
Reach Out .......................................103–104
Role Moves .....................................113–116
Sagiarius Moves ...........................155–156
Scienst ..........................................114–115
Scorpio Moves ................................152–154
Sculebu ..............................................162
Seek Out .............................................94–95
Shake Off ............................................91–92
Index
247
Index
Shotgun Diplomacy ................................131
Single–minded........................................145
Sleeper Agent .................................152–153
Smoke Me A Kipper – I’ll Be Back For
Breakfast.................................................143
So Say We All!.........................................140
Solo Mission ...........................................146
Squadron Leader ....................................146
Stalwart Defender ..................................141
Smmed To The Eyeballs ........................146
Support...........................................108–109
Survivor ..................................................134
Taccian..........................................113–114
Taurus Moves .................................133–135
The Old Familiar Sng.............................159
The Personal Touch.................................137
Thread The Needle .................................131
Thrives Under Pressure ..........................159
248
Tinkerer ..................................................155
True Love ................................................135
Truthspeaker...........................................162
Turn A Blind Eye......................................140
Unshakeable Beliefs........................133–134
Virgo Moves....................................145–146
You’ll Have To Go Through Me ...............134
Wait Helplessly .......................................109
Walk Out Of This Room While You Sll
Can141
Walls Have Ears.......................................156
Weather Serious Harm .......................92–93
Web Of Influence....................................137
Where There’s A Way .............................154
Wing Man ...............................................134
Wise Counsel ..........................................149
Zero Compromises..................................158
The last of humanity are fleeing across space, pursued by the Corax, an
implacable alien intelligence that destroyed their civilizaon. They’re
outnumbered and outgunned. Supplies are running low. Corax
doppelgangers undermine the fleet from within. The acons of a brave
few souls are all that stands between humanity and exncon.

Last Fleet is a tabletop roleplaying game where you play courageous

pilots, officers, engineers, policians and journalists struggling to hold
the human race – and themselves – together under unbelievable
pressure. The game focuses on acon, intrigue and drama in this high-
stakes situaon. You’ll fight space bales, search for enemy infiltrators,
and navigate facon polics. You’ll strive against your own self-doubt
and somemes crack under the stress.

This book includes the full game rules and seng, twelve character
playbooks, two quick start scenarios, and the alternate “Promethia
Damned” seng, in which teleporng cies flee from the god of death.
Addional material by Misha Bushyager, Joanna Piancastelli and Gav
Thorpe.

Cover art by Vincenus Mahew

Published by Black Armada

blackarmada.com